Chris, the most recent publication, Utiger, et. al. (2002), has all the American ratsnakes, including genera other than Elaphe, lumped together as closely related. That means Pantherophis, Bogertophis, Senticolis, Lampropeltis, Pituophis, Arizona, Rhinochelis, Cemophoris, etc. What's left of the "Elaphe", after the splitting of Old World Elaphe, are some of the Eurasian species which I mentioned. They are shown as a group as being like a sister group to the American genera in the weighted MP tree. It's true, all the American genera are supposedly more closely related to each other than to any Old World ratsnakes, but as I said they're like a sister group to the "Elaphe" group of Utiger, et. al. Their research shows the two groups are in a clade together with a common ancestor. Some other splits are questionable also, such as the removal of taeniura, moellendorffi, etc, from the Elaphe. My question is, "Is it necessary?" I don't think their research included enough outside clades/unrelated genera, and most snakes they sampled were closely related. I think more testing needs to be done and more thought put into which species need to be split. Different testing methods will probably yield different results, so we can't be sure, yet, that Utiger's proposals will hold up even in the scientific community.



My 10 cents



TC

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