Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just a further thought about the thread below on naming lineaticollis, not to mention deppei and jani that have at least 6 english names each.

There are 2 subspecies of lineaticollis, and I like to call them the Guatemalan Striped-neck Gopher (for P.l. gibsoni; it's literally what lineaticollis means) or just Guatemalan Gopher, and the other subspecies (P.l. lineaticollis) Mexican Striped-neck Gopher.

I think we should use Gopher rather than Pine for all the mexican pits simply because they are far from the geographic range of any pine snake, but very close to that of the western gophers. There also arre no montane pine snake in the US, whereas gophers occur all over lowland, mountains, etc., just as the mexican forms do.

For deppei and jani, we should all settle on something too. Any suggestions ? I suggest we call them gophers, not pines, first of all, for the same reason as above. But what about species names ?

Hi Simias

I feel the same way about calling them gophers instead of pines. The problem is that the same sp. are called differntly in different parts of the pituophis' range and are sometimes used interchangably. I just think their body structure is closer to the NA gophersnakes(catenifer, affinis, etc.) with their slender almost ratsnake-like bodies than pinesnakes which have heavier/thicker bodies in the eastern side of NA. Some intergration of animals can lead to some confusion also. Anyway, just IMHO.
-----
Jonel @ Selective Propagations
www.spsnakes.com