Hey, guys. Sorry for the late arrival, but it's been so hectic here lately, I haven't had time to log on.

I've seen or heard half doz. frog species, couple turtle sps, Eastern garters, northern water sns, brown sn, and a n. ringneck, so far, in n. MI. The weather is getting better, as it's in the 60's already this morning. Looking for my first sm. green sn. of the year.

As far as Burbrink and the taxonomy goes, here's my thoughts in brief. I think the various Pituophis species are closely related to the ratsnakes, esp. Pantherophis/Elaphe. I don't think Pantherophis sps should be included in Pituophis at this time, however. ASAMOF, I'm not even sure how closely related all the Pituophis sps are to each other. Regardless of the molecular evidence, it seems to me that Pantherophis sps are easily separated from Pituophis sps, which should be enough to put them in a different genus. I do think we should start thinking of the various Pituophis sps as ratsnakes, however.

It should be interesting to see how the scientific community takes these new proposals. Maybe CNAH will accept them right away. Time will tell.

More later...Terry


>>How're your herp activites going this spring? We finally had some decent weather here. The frogs are calling outside my house and the garters are finally showing up.
>>
>>Regards
>>John
>>
>>
>>>>Two steps forward and one step back seems to be a good analogy.....the day I get a time-machine, I'll know for sure I'm sure the interpretation of molecular data will become more of a true science in time, but for now, it seems that a lot of the data can be used any way you wish......without complete data......chimerism.
>>>>
>>>>I suppose it's easy to make fun of researchers who throw natural history to the side, when it isn't agreeable with a molecular barcode, but hey, something has to be published, in a timely manner, otherwise the cv would suffer........shrug
>>>>
>>>>Shane
>>>>-----
>>>>Lifelist

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