Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Can someone either give me a link to the paper with the reclassified Elaphe or just tell me the new species names for mandarina and taeinura? I forgot and can't find the page again.

I'm not sure there is a link to the Utiger paper.

The names are: Euprepiophis mandarinus for the Mandarin rat, and that genus also includes conspicillatus, the Japanese forest rat; and the stripe-tails are Orthriophis taeniurus, and various other species in that genus.

>>Can someone either give me a link to the paper with the reclassified Elaphe or just tell me the new species names for mandarina and taeinura? I forgot and can't find the page again.

I am NEVER going to remember that! Never! I've got 15 species and none of their generic names are that long! WHAT is up with that! ^_^;

The price of science

I've been a little frustrated myself. I had to finally make a list of all the genera and species and keep a copy in my document files. I still refer to it often. I'm not the best speller in the world either.

In the long run it's necessary because of the taxonomy. We don't always agree, but at least folks are working on it and getting some of these species grouped into related taxons. That's one of the reasons working with Asians is important to some, and hopefully, the names will stabilize and we'll get used to them.

Hang in there

TC

It's good that we have a way to tell them all apart now. I wish they hadn't used the ending 'ophis' so much, kind of gets monotonous. And we already know they're snakes.

(forms a mental image of a mandarin ratsnake in an izod shirt... eu'prep'iophis...)

I have a horrible time with the Latin names even after 5 years of Latin(woo hoo- I can translate Cicero). It's the dyslexia- I'll swap paired vowels in a heartbeat. But now I may remember the mandarin snake in the IZOD, with the collar turned up no less! Good thing the snakes can't hear how horribly I mispronounce their names... they'd lose all respect for the mysterious bringer of rats. Thankfully I'm hooked on phonics!
Lora

Excellent post, Lora. I had two yrs. of Latin myself, as I was a language/science major in H.S. Even with this subject being right up my alley, I still have to work at it. It actually hampers me sometimes trying to get the pronunciations that are most commonly used

TC

...or have they merely been proposed?

Thanks for the clarification.

Simon

Simon:
From what I've been told by academic types, there is no formal acceptance process. If a paper is published in a reputable scientific journal the results are then as authoritative as any other piece of data.

Now any other scientist is free to attempt the same tests and either confirm or refute the results. In this case it would more likely involve someone else in the field analyzing the data and agreeing or disagreeing with the results.

If you've been following some of the recent threads here and on the taxonomy page you'll no doubt have observed that there are still extremely strong opinions on both side of this question. To paraphrase Shakespeare .

I'm going along with it because it appears that some of the divisions are convenient and appear apt from my point of view.

But since there are no taxonomy police to stop you, you can call them whatever you please.

John

Good answer, John.

The Utiger, et al, paper actually changes some of the changes from Helfenberger's 2001 paper, and Helfenberger is one of the author's of Utiger's 2002 paper. When Helfenberger, '01, put conspicillata in a group with porphyracea, and mandarina in with moellendorffi, there were some big rumblings on our forum, and I was pretty unhappy. But the Utiger paper has mandarinus and conspicillatus in the genus Euprepiophis and created a new genus for porphyraceus.

Some of the changes like this are received well by hobbyists and some aren't. An example of one I don't like is the carinata, quadrivirgata, davidi group being left in the Elaphe. They are supposed to be closely related to Elaphe, which I have my doubts about. Also situla and hohenackeri being more closely related to longissima than the Elaphe was a shocker. But I'm not a taxonomist, very few of us hobbyists are, and like you said, it would be up to another taxonomist to make changes. If Utiger's paper goes unchallenged by them, then these changes will stand as they are.

I suspect there could still be some more changes in nomenclature. Utiger et. al. may even make changes themselves to work they've done, if new data becomes available to make things even more clear. Personally, I welcome most of the new genera and changes. It will make the Asian ratsnakes easier to work with. I believe we are moving in the right direction, and I just hope that chemical analysis is truly a method that will work to solve phylogenetic problems.

Hope that adds a little to the conversation...

TC

Terry:
I love the post, can't wait for the next study to come out.

Yeah this is fun stuff for us on the taxonomic sidelines. What I'd like to see is a little more clarification on the order of branching between and among the asian and american rat snakes. there are way too many parallel branches in the eurasian snakes at the same level and not enough branching. I'd also like to see which asian branch is directly related to the american snakes.

I'd like to see what they're gonna do with frenata and prasina. By the look of the data they are not even as close to elaphe as ptyas is. I think they said something about putting them with Gonyosoma. But we'll see.

Once again, it's great fun to see some answers to these questions and always nice to hear from a true elaphe-phile.

John

Thanks, John.

I have to comment again, since you mentioned frenata and prasina. The Utiger paper did mention that they weren't placed, yet, but that morphologically they looked like they would be allied to Gonyosoma.

I agree. I think frenata and prasina should be in Gonyosoma simply on external characteristics alone. I'm hoping to pick up a pair of frenata soon, as my next species to work with, but just pictures alone of them shout Goiny. Actually, I don't think these species are any more related to the true Elaphe than Rhyncophis is. I wouldn't even be surprised to find that Rhyncophis is related to other Gonyosoma.

You're right, this is fun. I can't wait for the next paper to come out either. According to Rex we shouldn't have to wait too awefully long, and there is more work to be done. Isn't it great that some professionals are finally working with the snakes we love. I've always felt the Asians would get their time in the sun, so to speak.

Nice to hear your comments, John. I don't know that there's enough data, yet, to determine the order and branching of the various genera. There are some generalities we might be able to work with though.

The older, more basal species, seem to be the ones closest to the tropics, which probably evolved more slowly over long periods of geologic time where conditions were pretty stable. In N.A. it would be triaspis and flavirufa, and in Asia, it would be the members of Coelognathus. Interestingly, radiatus and others seem to be as closely related to the Old World racers, as they are to ratsnakes. In my opinion, the ratsnakes and racers had common ancestors and are still pretty closely related today.

Anyway, it's fun stuff, and I love working with the Asians. Glad to see ya spending time on the forum. Later...

TC

I was talking to someone recently working with them. They sound (and look) like a very cool project. But I'll leave the new species to you trendsetters. You know I'm on my search for the perfect Sichuan mandarinus.

Oh well. Something to look forward to.
John

You wrote:
But I'm not a taxonomist, very few of us hobbyists are, and like you said, it would be up to another taxonomist to make changes. If Utiger's paper goes unchallenged by them, then these changes will stand as they are.

My response:
One does not have to be a taxonomist to evaluate taxonomic proposals; most biologists are in fact not taxonomists but it is up to them to accept or reject changes. There are many different reasons for making taxonomic proposals, but the one that will garner the most support is polyphyly. Polyphyly means a group is composed of members of different lineages instead of the descendants of a single common ancestor. No scientist will knowingly accept a polyphyletic group as a valid taxon, although they will accept such groups on an informal basis. The term legless lizards, for example, is a polyphyletic group and indeed there is no scientific name for this informal group, but scientists often refer to it when they are discussing, say, convergent evolution. The legless lizards as a group is a very good example of species that are similar because of adaptations to similar ways of life or convergent evolution. The genus Elaphe is not a polyphyletic group. Utiger et al.'s data does not demonstrate polyphyly. Hence Utiger et al. does not have the most compelling reason one can find to break up Elaphe. A second good reason for breaking up a taxon, besides polyphyly, is morphological disparity. The species of Elaphe are, in the opinion of scientists who had studied them prior to Utiger et al., not morphologically disparate enough to merit being placed in more than a single genus. Utiger et al. themselves proffer no new data on morphological disparity. Hence Utiger et al. do not have the two most compelling reasons for breaking up Elaphe; they nevertheless still insist on breaking it up. That is most likely because these authors, as a group, do not tolerate paraphyletic taxa. Paraphyletic taxa do share a common ancestor and therefore they are not polyphyletic. An example of a paraphyletic taxon is Reptilia. Most scientists, including Charles Darwin, have no problem accepting paraphyletic taxa. Many taxonomists, unfortunately, have chosen to follow the lead of the late German scientist Willi Hennig who, for some unknown ideological reason, decides that paraphyletic taxa are not tolerable.

You wrote:
I suspect there could still be some more changes in nomenclature. Utiger et. al. may even make changes themselves to work they've done, if new data becomes available to make things even more clear. Personally, I welcome most of the new genera and changes. It will make the Asian ratsnakes easier to work with. I believe we are moving in the right direction, and I just hope that chemical analysis is truly a method that will work to solve phylogenetic problems.

My response:
I agree that there will always be new taxonomic proposals. Utiger et al.'s data, however, fails to show that Elaphe is polyphyletic. They have shown that Elaphe is paraphyletic, but this fact has been known for decades. Most scientists, especially most of the greatest scientists who have lived, are not averse to paraphyletic taxa, unlike the Hennigians or cladists. My prediction is that those authors who have decided to follow Willi Hennig's lead (i.e. the cladists) will probably adopt Utiger et al.'s classification. Those who are more classically trained (i.e. the Darwinians) will probably ignore Utiger et al.'s proposed changes. There will probably not be consensus in the foreseeable future.

RS:
I'll preface by saying that I'm a humble hobbyist who knows next to nothing about systematics. The last thing I want to do is to raise any serious debate concerning things about which I am not qualified to address. So I publish this with a smile on my face and love in my heart. You make some very good points in your previous arguments concerning this study and on issues of taxonomy in general (at least to a layman such as myself). But regardless of the side of the paraphyly issue you are on, wouldn't you have to agree that an arrangement that has "elaphe" vulpina closer to "elaphe" rufodorsata than to pituophis melanoleucus is seriously in need of revision? I mean rufodorsata isn't even an egg layer for goodness sakes. At the very least you would have to bring all the Lampropeltines into Elaphe if you wanted to be consistent.

So something has to be done. If the Darwinians don't like the direction it's going let them do their own studies or at least publish a critique (why don't you take a shot at a tree for the ratsnakes? That would be fun for us here on this forum.). I agree that some of the numbers on that tree were pretty low. So I don't have a great emotional investment in some of those calls. But several seem to be common sensical. So whether it's Euprepiophis or Elaphe, I agree that mandarin(us)/(a) and conspcilillat(us)/(a) are more closely related to each other than to the rest of the ratsnakes. It's the same as Pituophis being constructed to show the closer kinship of melanoleucus and say deppei as opposed to the North American ratsnakes.

Do you forsee any publications coming out soon on ratsnakes from scientists that do not agree with the approach taken by Utiger et al.?

Regards
John Firneno

You wrote:
But regardless of the side of the paraphyly issue you are on, wouldn't you have to agree that an arrangement that has "elaphe" vulpina closer to "elaphe" rufodorsata than to pituophis melanoleucus is seriously in need of revision? I mean rufodorsata isn't even an egg layer for goodness sakes. At the very least you would have to bring all the Lampropeltines into Elaphe if you wanted to be consistent. So something has to be done.

My response:
Thank you for your encouraging comments. Live birth has evolved independently in many different reptilian and amphibian lineages. Its presence has more to do with the climate in which a species lives than it does with its ancestry. Utiger et al.'s data does show that it is part of a paraphyletic Elaphe; including it does not make Elaphe a polyphyletic group. Therefore there is no compelling phylogenetic reason to remove it. Whether Elaphe rufodorsata deserves to be placed in a genus of its own on the basis of its reproductive characteristic is a different question than whether Elaphe should be broken up because it is paraphyletic. The taxonomic status of Elaphe rufodorsata should be considered on its own merits, and a decision on that question should not have any bearing on whether Lampropeltines such as Pituophis, Lampropeltis, Cemophora and Stilosoma are valid genera.

You wrote:
If the Darwinians don't like the direction it's going let them do their own studies or at least publish a critique (why don't you take a shot at a tree for the ratsnakes? That would be fun for us here on this forum.). I agree that some of the numbers on that tree were pretty low. So I don't have a great emotional investment in some of those calls. But several seem to be
common sensical. So whether it's Euprepiophis or Elaphe, I agree that mandarin(us)/(a) and conspcilillat(us)/(a) are more closely related to each other than to the rest of the ratsnakes. It's the same as Pituophis being constructed to show the closer kinship of melanoleucus and say deppei as opposed to the North American ratsnakes. Do you forsee any publications coming out soon on ratsnakes from scientists that do not agree with the approach taken by Utiger et al.?

Regards
John Firneno

My response:
The Darwinians have done and published their own studies. Dowling, who is a Darwinian, has a life long interest in this group. He has made several revisions, including removing several species and putting them in their own genera, such as Gonyosoma, Bogertophis, and Senticolis. These genera have stood the test of time and scientific data. Although he has a hunch that the remaining species of Elaphe may form a polyphyletic group, he does not have evidence for polyphyly. Hence he has not dismantled Elaphe. Other Darwinians such as Lopez and Maxson have published a paper in 1995, based on mtDNA, which shows that Elaphe is not polyphyletic. Utiger et al. totally ignore or overlook this paper, and they never mention it in their study. Utiger et al. also have not shown any evidence that Elaphe is polyphyletic. In fact, their study merely confirm that of Lopez and Maxson. I have also found a recent study that shows Elaphe is not polyphyletic. This paper appears in the journal Acta Zoologica Sinica. Since Elaphe is not polyphyletic, Darwinians such as Lopez and Maxson have continued to recognize it as a valid genus, even though it is demonstrably paraphyletic. Whether the Darwinians will publish their critique(s) of Utiger et al. remains to be seen. I predict that many of them will simply ignore Utiger et al.'s proposal and agree with Lopez and Maxson's recognition of Elaphe as a paraphyletic taxon. I also predict that many cladists will simply ignore whatever criticisms the Darwinians will make concerning Utiger et al.'s apparent intolerance of paraphyletic taxa, because the cladists have done so for decades.

Phew! That's a lot for this ol' layman to get his aching head around, lol!

So, (If I understand this correctly) seeing as there is no "official" acceptance of proposed changes, then if I choose to still use the genus name "Elaphe" for Asian ratsnakes, I'm not committing a cardinal sin?...or am I?

It seems as though there may definitely be grounds for someone to challenge the new classification.

I grew up with "Elaphe" and it'll be hard to give it up so easily.

Thanks so much for trying to explain it all.

Simon

You wrote:
if I choose to still use the genus name "Elaphe" for Asian ratsnakes, I'm not committing a cardinal sin?...or am I?

My response:
Science is not a religion, therefore there is no "sin" for questioning scientific facts. In fact, scientists are encouraged to be skeptical by nature, and not to accept anything on faith. On the other hand, taxonomy is not strictly science. In fact, some taxonomists do seem to adhere to Hennig's Principle of Monophyly as if it were some sort of religious dogma. If you are a Hennigian, and you tolerate paraphyletic taxa, then perhaps in the eyes of some cladists you may have "sinned."

You wrote:
It seems as though there may definitely be grounds for someone to challenge the new classification.

My response:
Absolutely. First of all, the branching order of the species in Utiger et al.'s study may differ when using other molecules or morphological characters or simply varying the weighting scheme used. Secondly, even if one accepts Utiger et al.'s tree(s), different classifications can result from the same tree(s). Not only do Darwinians and cladists classify animals differently, but different cladists may classify differently. Given their consensus tree, one cladist may recognize only a single genus, whereas another cladist may recognize as many genera as there are species in their study. Of course a third cladist may recognize an intermediate number of genera. A fourth one may differ from the third. A fifth one may differ from all others. There simply is no one "correct," "objective," or universally accepted classification for a particular cladogram, or set of relationships, even among cladists. There is ample room for disagreement on the best classification, even if there is agreement on the topology of the tree. I do not blame those who are not taxonomists for being confused.

Mr. Newton,

I appreciate your response. It is very interesting and I'd like to discuss more of this with you, but unfortunately my job is taking me out of town a lot right now. I didn't get home until very late last night. I will, however, make a couple quick comments, etc.

>>You wrote:
>>But I'm not a taxonomist, very few of us hobbyists are, and like you said, it would be up to another taxonomist to make changes. If Utiger's paper goes unchallenged by them, then these changes will stand as they are.
>>
>>My response:
>>One does not have to be a taxonomist to evaluate taxonomic proposals; most biologists are in fact not taxonomists but it is up to them to accept or reject changes. There are many different reasons for making taxonomic proposals, but the one that will garner the most support is polyphyly. Polyphyly means a group is composed of members of different lineages instead of the descendants of a single common ancestor. No scientist will knowingly accept a polyphyletic group as a valid taxon, although they will accept such groups on an informal basis. The term legless lizards, for example, is a polyphyletic group and indeed there is no scientific name for this informal group, but scientists often refer to it when they are discussing, say, convergent evolution. The legless lizards as a group is a very good example of species that are similar because of adaptations to similar ways of life or convergent evolution. The genus Elaphe is not a polyphyletic group. Utiger et al.'s data does not demonstrate polyphyly. Hence Utiger et al. does not have the most compelling reason one can find to break up Elaphe. A second good reason for breaking up a taxon, besides polyphyly, is morphological disparity. The species of Elaphe are, in the opinion of scientists who had studied them prior to Utiger et al., not morphologically disparate enough to merit being placed in more than a single genus. Utiger et al. themselves proffer no new data on morphological disparity. Hence Utiger et al. do not have the two most compelling reasons for breaking up Elaphe; they nevertheless still insist on breaking it up. That is most likely because these authors, as a group, do not tolerate paraphyletic taxa. Paraphyletic taxa do share a common ancestor and therefore they are not polyphyletic. An example of a paraphyletic taxon is Reptilia. Most scientists, including Charles Darwin, have no problem accepting paraphyletic taxa. Many taxonomists, unfortunately, have chosen to follow the lead of the late German scientist Willi Hennig who, for some unknown ideological reason, decides that paraphyletic taxa are not tolerable.
>>

My response (TC):
I agree you don't have to be a taxonomist to discuss, etc, but the taxonomists are the ones doing the chemical analysis and writing up all these changes. I agree, us hobbyists don't have to agree with the changes, but we are forced to decide whether to accept or go against the changes, or what we see as a trend. I for one do not accept certain things, but go along with others. I am concerned also with what is most acceptable.

As far as the polyphyletic and paraphyletic terms go, I'm getting an education here. I know a little about cladists, as I've been more traditional in the past, and was really surprised when I started seeing papers by the cladists, but it's something we have to deal with, imho, and hopefully the methods will make it easier to decide which species are closely related, enough to construct a genus for them. I would like paraphyly explained a little more too, if you don't mind.

For the sake of a future discussion, imagine this. Let's say that the Coelagnathus sps., which may be allied to the racers, and some of the Old World racers, come from a common ancestor from way back. Would you argue that all these species should be in the same genus, ex: Elaphe? I tend to agree that all the old Elaphe sps. probably came from a common ancestor, but we could argue that Gonyosoma, Rhyncophis, Spalerophis, Lampropeltis, and Pituophis, etc, all come from that ancestor too. What I'm saying is it is kinda symantecs in a way. Where do you draw the line? I think we need a system which recognizes species that are not, or are, very closely related. My question is, how do you do that? It would be nice to know the family trees, too, but that has always been extremely difficult to do.

>>You wrote:
>>I suspect there could still be some more changes in nomenclature. Utiger et. al. may even make changes themselves to work they've done, if new data becomes available to make things even more clear. Personally, I welcome most of the new genera and changes. It will make the Asian ratsnakes easier to work with. I believe we are moving in the right direction, and I just hope that chemical analysis is truly a method that will work to solve phylogenetic problems.
>>
>>My response:
>>I agree that there will always be new taxonomic proposals. Utiger et al.'s data, however, fails to show that Elaphe is polyphyletic. They have shown that Elaphe is paraphyletic, but this fact has been known for decades. Most scientists, especially most of the greatest scientists who have lived, are not averse to paraphyletic taxa, unlike the Hennigians or cladists. My prediction is that those authors who have decided to follow Willi Hennig's lead (i.e. the cladists) will probably adopt Utiger et al.'s classification. Those who are more classically trained (i.e. the Darwinians) will probably ignore Utiger et al.'s proposed changes. There will probably not be consensus in the foreseeable future.
>>

My response (TC):
I agree on this. Hopefully, there'll be more work on the various ratsnake groups (i.e. Elaphe, etc.) This will be discussed and argued and some of the changes may be welcomed and some may cause conflict for some time. Ex: I still think the Western and Eastern fox snakes should be in the same species, and on the other hand would be for separating the Great Plains rat and the corn snake into their own species.

I look forward to more discussion, especially when I have more time. Hope to catch up on my 'away from home work' soon.

'Til then.....TC.