Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Last night, Joe Collins gave an incredible talk for the Greater Cinci Herp Soc. His primary focus was the future of herpetological classifiactions. DNA work is changing everything we know or THINK we know about these animals.

Just a few points of interest related to milk snakes and I will be happy to discuss any of them more...

-- Scarlet king snakes are NOT triangulum or even close. DNA has proven their closest relative in the US are ZONATA!

-- Coastal Plains milk snakes (sorry guys, don't shoot the messenger...as Joe said) do not exisit. Well, they exist but they (DNA WORK again) are nothing more than a color morph of the eastern milk snake. Scarlet kings do not breed with eastern milk snakes. DNA has the answers...sorry!

Lampropeltis triangulum...taxonomically speaking...is a mess.
Everything is changing rapidly, but...in a nut shell, a lot of the animals that we think are closely related are simply not.

Oops. You sure did it now. I can't wait to see this heat up. LOL
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Steve W.

And don't be shy to elaborate on the triangulum findings. (But zonata and scarlet kings??? Weird.)

Dean, did Joe Collins cite where all this information is being published? Thanks.

Scott Ballard

no...and I was serahin on his site...to be honest, I'm not sure it has been written up yet, and if it has, perhaps it's not "public record"

You can contact him through his website www.cnah.org
He's usually very willing to answer questions.

I'll send him an email myself. He's still on vacation, but I'm sure he'll respond to me and I'll pass it along.

I'd like to get my hands on some of the papers myself if they are in print yet.

The next field guide is going to be very very different.

Thanks Dean. It would be good to know whose DNA research Joe is referring to. In the past, Joe has considered some subspecies to be full species that was very controversial and not accepted by others in the scientific community. I don't doubt that the triangulum group are a hodge podge that need to be straightened out, but I would want to see the peer-reviewed papers that determine that. It isn't a done deal until it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Scott

I really have an interest in the tropical Triangulum as you well know, and hope some info will surface about the legitamacy of Oligozona or Smithi. Please count me in (and prob Scott) for any field trips. I do have good locality Polyzona, Olig and Conanti if Joe is interested in samples.
BTW Tony Dongerra has had some DNA work done on his Temporalis which contradicts the latest info as you likely know...this ssp might need several second looks. There's more there than Eastern milk, Ray Charles can see that.
Like Scott asked, I really need something that's published and credited also.
They're all Gentilis .....Jeff

I like the Ray Charles comment though it doesn’t say much for JC’s power of observation! LOL

For the record I did not do any DNA work but have been privy to one of the researcher’s interpretations. I am not at liberty to say much but I think it’s safe to say the following:

1) Temporalis is not, repeat NOT, just a color phase of eastern milk. (Funny that, as presented, JC’s comments on coastals are no different than his view prior to any DNA analysis.)
2) Coastal do not BROADLY integrade/hybridize with scarlet kings indicating that the two are indeed separate species.

My personal opinion is that the complex is currently in flux and trying to classify them according to our rude system is like trying to drive a square peg in a round hole!

There's been talk of moving elapsoides out of the triangulum group for quite awhile now. Interesting about the Coastals, those poor buggers can't find an identity to save their lives! But they're the prettiest of all the U.S. milks.

I recall hearing from someone who was doing DNA work on the triangulum complex that the western forms (gentilis, multistrata, taylori, maybe celaenops) might eventually be grouped together as simply geographic variations of the same species/subspecies, most likely just as "gentilis". But who knows what'll happen.

Todd

One thing I have always suspected is that elapsoides were not triangulum...and the tropical subs as well. They are just so different.

It's all changing so fast...who knows what the end result will be.

Turtles are closer to birds than to lizards or snakes.
Crazy stuff,,,

Hope you don't mind my input on this.

I have seen some DNA sequences for nearly all L.t. subspecies pop up in the public DNA databases recently and the author has assured me that the paper will be in print soon (its is currently under review).

An interesting, if often unspoken, possibility is that these groups speciated so recently that neither morphology nor DNA based work will be able to tell them apart even though they are distinct species (atleast from the snakes point of view). If thats the case then different genes (or morphological characters) will give different results, making things very messy to say the least.

Don't put too much trust in the placement of turtles with birds, or anywhere else for that matter. That call really depends on who you talk to, all my colleges insist they are the first lineage that branched off the rest of the reptiles birds.
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Very interesting to hear.

Finally someone straightened out the messes involving temporalis and elapsoides.
Michael's Place

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Michael's Place has updated, better caresheets
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
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www.freewebs.com/mikesnake

great job, dean (and joe)...i always worry when someone on the forum says "i'm going to stir things up..." because all too often the pot suffers as a result. but in this instance you've cooked up a real treat (egad! I'll stop that metaphor now...)...seriously, it's great to have what we think stirred up when it's done so with science.

loved it.

terry