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is Epicrates cenchria xerophilus a valid subspiecies?

TheBigSnake,
....The subspecific status of xerophilus is doubtful. IMO we do not currently have enough information to determine which of the currently recognized subspecies are valid. My guess is that at some time in the future there will be between 5 and 10 recognized subspecies of Epicrates cenchria. Xerophilus may or may not be among them. Maurus will probably be classified as a seperate species.
Jeff

>>is Epicrates cenchria xerophilus a valid subspiecies?

Jeff I do not understand why you said that maurus should be a differnte species that cenchria or I did not understood your comment, this is the species definition "A fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and consisting of related organisms capable of INTERBREEDING" that can produce fertile babies of course, I do not see why maurus shoul be a different species, they may be different sub species of maurus but not different specie than cenchria

Ricardo,
...Your definition is the same as the one I learned many many years ago. Since then we have seen countless examples of animals, especially snakes of different species breeding together and producing fertile young. I have never crossed a maurus with any of the other subspecies. I have heard of people who have done this and have seen some babies that were reported to be crosses. It seems to me that crossing these two subspecies may not be real easy. There must be a bunch of people out there who do not pairs of the same subspecies and are trying to get maurus to cross with other subspecies. There are not a lot of crossed babies on the market to make me think these attempts at crossbreeding are successful often. I am not a taxonomist and do not know specifically why they think maurus is different enough to deserve classification as a seperate species but to me they do seem very different than the cenchria cenchria, gaigei, barbouri, hygrophilus and polylepsis. To me the assissi, alvarezi and crassus down at the southern part of Rainbow Boa range seem also different from those subspecies through the central part of the range. But, like I said I am not a taxonomist.
Jeff

>>Jeff I do not understand why you said that maurus should be a differnte species that cenchria or I did not understood your comment, this is the species definition "A fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and consisting of related organisms capable of INTERBREEDING" that can produce fertile babies of course, I do not see why maurus shoul be a different species, they may be different sub species of maurus but not different specie than cenchria

I think that there are not more crosses between this two sub species maurus and canchria is because there is not interested in doing it, I had a birth of maurus with cencrhria 7 years ago, i did it by mistake, I did not has enough cages and put a maurus and a cenchria for 2 weeks together and 5 moths later i had 17 healthy babies ones bigger than the other one and more brighters but they look pretty similars, I had to euthanize all those babies because at that time I was living in venezuela i used to free all my babies and of course i could not do that with these one, i also have heard about crosses between maurus and alvarezis, with the maurus morphs that are out there, we will start to see more crosses between these two subspecies