Things seem a little quiet on here lately but since there has been such an interest in classification not long ago I thought this might be a good topic to bring up.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to have a discussion with a guy that was involved in the research that was reviewing the relationships between elapsoides and triangulum. He had told me there was another group of researchers that was reviewing the getula complex. As many of you know there is now more emphasis on the molecular species concept and DNA work is frequently employed to re-examine these relationships. Many of you may have read Burbrinks paper regarding the obsoleta complex of rat snakes. You may recall the resulting proposal was sinking the ssp's and creating three species based on a north-south distributional basis. These were to be called the eastern (allegheniensis), midland (spiloides), and western (obsoleta) rat snakes. Anyhow, what he told me was the direction these guys were going with getula was to create three separate clades within getula. The first would be the getula/floridana group. The second would be the nigra/holbrooki/splendida clade and the third would be nigrita/californiense group. Has anyone else heard of any of this? Any thought? Thanks, Phil

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