>>Where does this author place Homoroselaps? I see it listed in the same clad as the Atractaspids all the time, even though it alone among them has fixed front fangs. Just curious.



Vidal did not include Homoroselaps in that particular paper.



In a later paper (Vidal & Hedges, 2002), he finds Homoroselaps rooted between Aparallactus and Atractaspis in his C-mos nuclear gene phylogeny and includes both of those in a monophyletic Atractaspididae (which is not rooted among the elapids).



Kelly et al. (2003) were unable to resolve the position of Homoroselaps. Slowinski & Keogh (2000) found it to lie outside the remaining elapids. Nobody other than Heise's (by modern standards relatively unsophisticated) analysis has found Atractaspis to be rooted within the elapids.



In summary, it is probably fair to say that the position of Homoroselaps remains unclear. It certainly does not seem to be rooted within the remaining elapids, and Atractaspidid affinties seem a likely prospect. The present siutation is that the elapids, atractaspidids, psammophiines, boodontines/lamprophiines and pseudoxyrhophiines form a poorly resolved cluster, and some genera seem to be difficult to assign to one or the other of these (sub-) families based on the evidence currently available.



Cheers,



Wolfgang



References:



Kelly, C. M. R., N. P. Barker and M. H. Villet. 2003. Phylogenetics of advanced snakes (Caenophidia) based on four mitochondrial genes. Syst. Biol., 52:439-459.



Slowinski, J.B., Keogh, J.S., 2000. Phylogenetic relationships of elapid snakes based on cytochrome b mtDNA sequences. Mol. Phylogen. Evol. 15, 157–164.



Vidal, N. and S. B. Hedges. 2002. Higher-level relationships of caenophidian snakes inferred from four nuclear and mitochondrial genes. C. R. Biologies 325:987–995.
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