>>"Utiger et al., for example, split the genus Elaphe into a large number of morphologically undefinable genera that even snake experts cannot define."

>>

>>You still stuck on that?



If you mean I still find their taxonomic proposal untenable, then yes. Time has not changed that.



>>Come on, if you can't tell a Pantherophis from a Euprepriophis, you're blind.



Let's suppose that some people do not have the privilege of seeing these snakes in person. Can you tell these people the difference between "Pantherophis" and "Euprepriophis?" Can you describe the morphological differences between them? Can you tell us what new evolutionary changes have occurred in "Pantherophis" since these species have migrated from Eurasia to the United States and why these new evolutionary changes would justify classifying these species in "Pantherophis" instead of Elaphe? I submitted similar questions to some snake experts but so far I have not gotten any answers, and there is no effort to differentiate the many different genera within Utiger et al. These authors split the many species of Elaphe into a dozen or so genera without telling us how to distinguish these genera morphologically or even biochemically.



>>"Doing so contributes nothing to our understanding of the relationship among the various subgroups of ratsnakes and in fact obscures the close relationship among them."

>>

>>If all the segregate genera are closely related, no one's done any phylogenetic work to demonstrate it.



That is patently untrue. There are many biochemical and morphological studies which have demonstrated they are closely related to each other. The following paper (and references therein) is a good example:



Lopez, T.J., Maxson, L.R., 1995. Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Variation and Genetic Differentiation Among Colubrine Snakes (Reptilia, Colubridae, Colubrinae). Biochemical Systematics And Ecology 23(5):487-505

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