You wrote:

Nope, the grouping of Euprepriophis with the other taxa studied rather than Ptyas is poorly supported.



My response:

If so, then their resurrection of Euprepriophis appears unwarranted. Splitting Elaphe mandarina from Elaphe on the basis of poorly supported evidence is scientifically untenable.



You wrote:

And Ptyas is the outgroup--it's supposed to be distantly related to all of the taxa involved, so a poor support for its outgroup status is particularly damning.



My response:

The outgroup is chosen arbitrarily. If one is not careful, one can choose a member of the ingroup as the outgroup. Damning? Ptyas is indeed an outgroup to Old World plus New World Elaphe according to Lopez and Maxson's mtDNA data. If there is poor support for its outgroup status, it is indeed damning evidence that Utiger et al.'s hypothesis is poorly supported.



You wrote:

until you present a compelling reason to believe that Utiger et al. believe Elaphe sensu lato to be paraphyletic, there is no support for the claim that their split of Elaphe sensu lato represents a rejection on their part of paraphyletic taxa.



My response:

Since there is no evidence that Elaphe is polyphyletic, and since there is no evidence that Utiger et al. split Elaphe on the basis of morphological disparity, the only reason I can think of is an ideological intolerance of paraphyletic taxa. If you can think of another reason for their splintering of Elaphe, please let us know what it may be.

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