There have been a few genetic studies that have suggested that they are separate species.

Are these studies based on snakes (tissue) taken from the wild or from the captive population. If from captives, how many breeder animals came out of east Africa to found that captive population? I suspect there is lot of inbreeding in the captive population and it only represents the genes of a few individuals (at best).

Time and time again phylogenetic relationships based on morphology have been shown to be blatantly wrong.....and even more times when the genetic relationships have confirmed morphometric phylogenies. Of course, those studies don't get as much attention.

I believe strongly in the value of molecular genetics to give us more precision in phylogenetic analyses, but I am always curious about the sample size. In captive rufescens, that sample size may be as few as one or two animals and the captive gene pool has been contaminated with the genetic makeup of animals outside of the rufescens area.

Also, stripe is not a black back but a white back. So other species that have black back morphs are not really the same.

I wasn't referring to the striping. I was referring to the fact that several species of Erycines have populations that show varying amounts of melanism. I'm not saying it is correlated 100%, but I think the parallels are interesting and may speak to the development and inheritance of pattern and melanism in these snakes.

Aren't some rufescens dark-backed and light sided or have there even been enough wild animals looked at to know?
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

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