Nice summary from Toby. We've been sharing similar info for quite awhile.

King, I was in the one species (guttata) camp for a very long time. However, we don't have examples of intergrades to show the continuation of the species bt. Pantherophis (Elaphe) emoryi emoryi and P. guttatus slowinskii that I know of. I've switched to the two species theory based on the fact that emoryi and guttatus seem to have been separated for a very long time and are morphologically distinct. There seems to be gaps bt. ranges of the two species. If we were to find areas where they were intergrading I likely would buy back into the one species theory. But for now it seems like the two species idea works well. I don't like the idea of basing our decisions on mtdna either, but think it should be a combination of things.

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