The situation in Crotalus horridus does seem to be quite parallel to that in Pantherophis obsoletus if they form eastern vs. western clades... the gist would seem to be that local differences in selective pressures outweigh lineal history in determining patterns of variation in observable characters. Rather than just a confounding factor in creating good nomenclature, this is a very interesting pattern in its own right. Convergent evolution is usually discussed in terms of distantly related taxa, but here there seems to be convergent or parallel evolution between different lineages within a species.

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