Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Has anyone seen anything recent on the proposed name changes of of the elaphe group? Who's using what? I can understand the change of many north american elaphes to pantherophis, and actually think it's a good idea to separate them from asian species, for example. But I've been trying to find out why the spiloides ssp needs to be divided in two full species and the 4 other ssp of obsoleta melted in one species.

Your opinions and references would be appreciated.
Cheers, Jean

I suppose you are refering to the article by Burbrink, Lawson & Slowinski? The outcome of this article (the division of former species Elaphe obsoleta (excluding bairdi) into three new species E. alleghaniensis, E. obsoleta and E. spiloides) still is considered as highly controversial by many. Just dig into the taxonomy forum, in fact I highly recommend this, and you'll see what I mean.

However, their critique on the subspecies concept actually makes sense to me.

The article by Utiger et al is another matter entirely. With Patherophis we have a nice, clean, monophyletic group of ratsnakes, just like their closest relatives Pituophis and Lampropeltis.

At this time I follow Utiger et al by using the name Pantherophis obsoletus instead of Elaphe obsoleta, and I partially follow Burbrink et al by avoiding the use of the scientific names of the (former) subspecies of Pantherophis obsoletus. Instead I rather use trivial names (Yellow ratsnake rather than Pantherophis obsoletus quadrivittatus, Texas ratsnake rather than Pantherophis obsoletus lindheimeri, etc). At this time I can't think of any good reason to consider Pantherophis alleghaniensis or Pantherophis spiloides as valid species. Well, that's how I see it. I suggest you do some reading and make up your mind by yourself.