Greetings Mr. Frye,



What I was wondering was if isolating the venom would enable us to be more accurate comparing genera or species in genera with large numbers of species. I'm especially interested in the Elaphe, including the species that have been removed from the original Elaphe genus and put in new or resurrected genera. What you said was, however, that it could be used to look at family level of snakes which were dumped in the Colubridae, like genera were dumped in the Elaphe.



I have a question as a result. Do you think that Coelognathus, which contains 'radiatus', the species you got the venom from, represents an independent family?



Also, I have some comments. The genera Coelognathus and Gonyosoma had already been separated from Elaphe before Utiger et al. made their proposal in 2002. Utiger et al. proposes to split about half dozen new or resurrected genera from the remaining Elaphe. Some problems with the proposal include not having enough outlying genera to compare their results to and the fact that many of the proposed new genera seem very close on their family tree.



A couple more questions. Do you think any of the species that remained in the Elaphe before Utiger et al. possess the venom that radiatus does? Do you think any of the other species in Coelognathus possess this venom? How about Gonyosoma?



I think more work needs to be done on the Elaphe to resolve problems with that genus and also would suggest that the genus should still be in the same family and subfamily with Coelognathus and Gonyosoma even if they don't have any venom and the others do. I believe Utiger et al. did a good job with their research. Good to be moving forward with ratsnake taxonomy. I'm also happy to see the work you're doing with the venom research. I'll be looking forward to future articles. Thanks,



TC

[ Show Entire Thread ]