Thanks for the info on the Latin usage. That will come in handy.

Pantherophis hasn't replaced Elaphe in the literature, yet, but isn't that because the new literature is so slow in coming out, that the verdict is still out? Think about how long we waited before the Utiger et. al. paper(2002) came out. Hobbyists had wanted a separation of New World vs. Old World ratsnakes for a long time. We have a choice whether we want to use Pantherophis or stick with the old Elaphe name. IMO, there are a lot of votes for each choice.

I agree there should be more respect for the scientists, even when you don't agree with what they are proposing. The literature is most useful when making an argument for something and you want to have scientific backup for your arguments. I don't agree with the idea of dropping all subspecies names and just going with species, but I'm not going to trash the scientists who follow this reasoning. There's always going to be arguments bt. the scientists too, about which concept to follow, and sometimes those can be the nastiest of all.

Later....TC

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