As Rich posted above, E. barbouri was never fully accepted by the taxonomic community ever since it was first described by Dunn and Conant. In the original description, the main distinguishing characteristic which was said to differentiate it from E. murinus were the light centers in the dark dorsal spots, as opposed to the solid black dorsal spots of E. murinus. The problem with this is that E. murinus shows the entire spectrum of spot shades, from light centers to solid black centers all within a local population, and even among young from the same litter. Additionally, data on scale counts has shown that they all fall within the same range for specimens from both species. There is in fact, no way to differentiate the two, hence barbouri was dropped as they are the same species. There are currently four recognized species in Eunectes, just add E. notaeus to the three Rich listed. Thanks,



Kelly

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