Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Have eastern and western fox snakes been moved out of the Elaphe genus. I saw a recent ad on the classifieds that had them listed as something totally different. they didn't even keep the vulpina part.

Steve Schindler

Hi

Yes.. all north American Ratsnakes have been reclassified as the genus Pantherophis (obsoletus, guttatus and vulpinus)

The foxsnakes are therefore now named Pantherophis vulpinus vulpinus and Pantherophis vulpinus gloydi.

Some even consider them seperate species which are therefore named Pantherophis vulpinus and Pantherophis gloydi.
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Regards

Jan Grathwohl

You wrote:

Hi

Yes.. all north American Ratsnakes have been reclassified as the genus Pantherophis (obsoletus, guttatus and vulpinus)

The foxsnakes are therefore now named Pantherophis vulpinus vulpinus and Pantherophis vulpinus gloydi.

My response:
All except one. Elaphe flavirufa has been placed in a genus of its own, Pseudelaphe, by the same folks who transferred the remaining species into Pantherophis. The New World species of Elaphe has been known to share the unique derived character of an intrapulmonary bronchus with New World genera such as Lampropeltis, Pituophis, Arizona, Cemophora, Bogertophis, Stilosoma, and Rhinocheilus. But this character has now been found also in Old World Elaphe and in Coronella. The distribution of this character removes any doubt that Old World Elaphe and New World Elaphe are closely related. There is therefore no difference between New World species and Old World species of Elaphe. Utiger et al., the authors who made the taxonomic proposals, gave no reason whatsoever for their proposal. Nor did they tell us how to distinguish Pseudelaphe from Pantherophis. This is most likely because there is nothing that could serve to distinguish these genera from one another. But since this proposal appears in print, many people automatically will follow it just to stay "current."