First off there seems to be a differing opinion on whether the East African Sand Boas are referred to as "Eryx" or "Gongylophis", then there seems to be different info regarding them being colubrinus and loveridgei, as Egyptian and Kenyan. Some seem to refer to them as the same, and some seem to differentiate based on colour, or i've seen a reference to the amount of spotting on the sides. I've also read that they should just be referred to as kenyans and the "E. (or G)colubrinus" name.
The problem here is that many people will accept changes in taxonomy without reading the papers on which the changes are based. In this case, the paper is in Russian and hard to find.
The paper which reelevated Gongylophis was a paper by Anatoly Tokar based on his dissertation work with sandboas. It was the last thorough published work study on the group. I have the paper and have translated snippets (I don't read russian). My problem is that based on his arrangement of the sandboas, the genus Gongylophis is paraphyletic. This means that his arrangement puts species within this group that aren't Gongylophis. For that reason, it can't be a valid genus based on the rules of taxonomy.
I think many others hear down the herp grapevine that the change has been made and simply accept it. The same thing is true of Kluge's paper where he puts Rosyboas and Calabaria into the genus Charina - if you look at his study, data, and justifications at all, most people will realize the change isn't warranted.
This isn't a criticism of anyone who accepts such changes - no one has the time or inclination to read everything published and some changes have to be accepted on faith. In this case (Gongylophis), however, I read the paper and disagree.
Then there's the reading i've done that states the albinos were essentially a mix of egyptians and kenyans, but others say that they are the same and don't need to be further classified.
The East African Sandboas from the southern part of their range tend to have more orange and darker spots. These were originally described as E.c. loveridgei. However, when Tokar did his study of colubrinus, he found there wasn't any consistent group of characters that separated one population from the other. Basically, colubrinus from the northern part of their range tend to be more brown and yellow while the snakes from the southern part of the range tend to be more orange and black. But you can't pigeonhole any particular snake by looking at it. There are brown and yellow snakes in the south and orange and black snakes in the north and every combination in between.
And for the record, most lines of "Kenyans" in the US actually came out of Tanzania, not Kenya. The reason people use the name Kenyan still is that the orange and black snakes used to be worth more money than the (formerly) more common yellow and brown snakes. Many dealers looked at the groups of sandboas they had and sold the orange ones and Kenyans and Yellow ones and Egyptians, even if they all came in from the same location!
The original albino colubrinus were from Egypt. For years that was the only albino line available. Because orange snakes (Kenyans) were more colorful and worth more money, people bred the albino gene into those lines.
A few years later, some albino "Kenyans" were imported from Tanzania. Now the albino population is a genetic mixture of the genes of all of these wild caught albinos.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas
