Patrick wrote:
"Let me first say that I'd advise against taking CKing seriously. He's just grinding his axe."

Really? It is so typical of Patrick to make unsupported assertions.

"One brief point I'll make is that he's previously gone out of his way to point out at least one morphological difference distinguishing Pantherophis from Elaphe, but, now that it no longer suits his purpose, prefers to declare them `morphologically indistinguishable'."

I think Patrick may be mentioning the intrapulmonary bronchus. If so, why not just say it? I think Patrick has at least learned something from his arguments with me, but he is telling others to ignore my posts, ostensibly because he does not want others to learn. After all, too much information can be dangerous, at least for those who like their followers to be ignorant. Too much information can be detrimental, for example, for the leaders of cladism, because their followers will be able to see that the cladistic emperor really has no clothes.

"Anyways. There aren't really definitive lists in taxonomy."

That is exactly what I have said before.

"IIRC, the species Utiger et al. place in the genus Pantherophis are Pantherophis guttatus, Pantherophis vulpinus, Pantherophis obsoletus, and Pantherophis bairdi."

And of course Patrick is following Utiger et al.'s lead in using Pantherophis for these species, even though he cannot tell us the difference between Pantherophis and Elaphe. The intrapulmonary bronchus is also present in some species of Old World Elaphe, as it turned out, but it is not as well developed as it is in the New World lampropeltine snakes.

"Burbrink split Pantherophis guttatus into three species, but he uses the name Elaphe for all of them, giving Elaphe guttata, Elaphe emoryi, and Elaphe slowinskii."

Alas Patrick is not telling us why Burbrink split E. guttata. I did. I said Burbrink did it because of his adherence to cladistic ideology, not because these "species" are reproductively isolated from one another. If one follows Patrick's advice to ignore me, one would not know why Burbrink proposed the split without reading and comprehending the paper. Patrick may (or may not) have read the paper, but he definitely is not showing us any evidence that he comprehends the reason behind the split.

"Burbrink also split Pantherophis obsoletus into three species, calling them Elaphe obsoleta, Elaphe allegheniensis, and Elaphe spiloides. So, generally people choose which changes to follow and which to ignore."

People often do so because they are blindly following the latest taxonomic proposals. Unlike many, I do attempt to evaluate proposed taxonomic changes rather than blindly follow them.

"My preference is to accept Utiger et al's changes, as creating more cohesive and coherent groups from the previously unwieldy and disparate Elaphe, and to reject Burbrink's as unnecessary splitting."

Utiger et al. split Elaphe unnecessarily. The genera they create are not morphologically different from one another. For example, how "disparate" is "Pseudelaphe" from "Pantherophis"? Even WW cannot tell us. The answer is that they are not "disparate" at all. The genus Elaphe is morphologically conservative. That is evident from the fact that Elaphe migrated to North America more than 20 million years ago, and yet morphologically N. American species of Elaphe cannot be distinguished from Eurasian species of Elaphe. Similarly, the Eurasian species of Elaphe cannot be distinguished morphologically from one another, hence Utiger et al.'s splintering of Elaphe really makes no sense. The many genera they recognize are contrived and undefinable. Utiger et al. are only splintering Elaphe because it is paraphyletic, not because the species within are "disparate" as Patrick falsely and/or igorantly claims.

Patrick is also telling us that Burbrink's split is "unnecessary." That makes no sense, since both Burbrink and Utiger et al. are applying their cladistics-based ideological intolerance of paraphyletic taxa by treating each lineage as a taxon. Burbrink is treating each major mtDNA lineage as a species, and Utiger et al., with one notable exception (perhaps a bone of concession to the Darwinians), treat each major mtDNA lineage as a genus. Therefore there is no difference in Burbrink and Utiger et al.'s taxonomic practice. How Patrick can reach opposite conclusions about the acceptabilities of these proposals is beyond comprehension, especially since he never told us why he accepts one but rejects the other. Perhaps his professor told him to do that? We may never know.

"In practice, my impression is that a lot of people are using Utiger's genera and ignoring Burbrink's split of Pantherophis obsoletus, but that Burbrink's split of Pantherophis guttatus is more widely accepted, at least the emoryi part. His creation of Elaphe slowinskii seems a bit shakier."

A lot of people are using Utiger's genera because they simply do not know better. Patrick does not know better. Patrick does not know why Burbrink's proposal has met with greater resistance. May be it is because he won't accept my arguments due to prejudice and ignorance. So, if Patrick does not know why Burbrink's proposal is unacceptable, then how is he going to tell others why it is unacceptable? If he does not know, then may be he himself is simply following taxonomic proposals blindly.

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