Posted by:
shelley7950
at Thu Sep 15 10:23:49 2005 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by shelley7950 ]
I see..(I think)...please be patient with me, I was an English major, not a biology major, but I am interested...Put very simplistically, an ancient Asian elaphe crossed the Bering Land Bridge to N. America and was subsequently isolated; it evolved into what we call the N. American rat snakes, the Kingsnakes, and the Bull/Pine snakes...at this point the N. American ratsnakes are actually more closely related to Lampropeltis and Pituophis than to the old world elaphe? I'm guessing because you mentioned hemipenal morphometric differences that the N. American ratsnakes cannot breed with old world ratsnakes, but I know they can breed with Pituophis and Lampropeltis...Is this correct? Thank you so much for taking the time to respond and I hope I don't sound as possibly stupid as I feel...
SR
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