Actually that was a firecracker compared to what we have coming out.



In any case, the advanced snakes (Colubroidea) are a very diverse group. Psammophiinae (which we took to calling 'protoelapids' as a very casual term) are most closely related to the Atractaspidae (stilleto snakes and such) and the Pseudoxyrhophiinae (which is made up by all the Madagascar advanced snakes, such as Leioheterodon). After that, the nearest neighbors (and still very close) are the Elapidae. on the other side of the Elapidae are the other 'colubrids' and there are several distint lineages there as well, including the Colubrinae, Homolapsinae, Natricinae, Xenodontinae and others.



The Xenodontinae lineage is a mixed bag. Heterodon and Hydrodynastes would typically cause mostly just localised swelling but I wouldn't really peg them for much more. In contrast are the Philodryas species (which are also Xenodontinae) which are well documented to have severe bites.



Sitting as a very basal split at the absolute bottom of the Colubroidea tree are the Viperidae.



This is all stuff thats already known. Our venom results are going to cause a pretty big seismic shift. The first two papers will be out sometime in July and the third in August. I'll of course post when they're out.



Cheers

BGF

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