Hi,

It's important to realize that most current taxonomic work is done in a cladistic framework, and using the evolutionary species concept, meaning that evolutionary history and genetic distinctness is more important than biological interactions. There's a lot of argument among scientists over whether or not this is a good thing, but it's the way most papers are written these days. Hybridization in captivity is generally not taken as evidence that two species should be considered one; even frequent hybridization in nature (as in American, southern, and Fowler's toads, or the five-lined skink group) is not sufficient if the species involved maintain their distinctness in nature.

It's been a while since I read any of the Emydidine classification revisions, but as I recall the reason Clemmys was broken up into Clemmys, Actinemys, and Glyptemys was because Terrapene arose from within Clemmys according to the researcher's cladogram, thus rendering Clemmys (in the older, more inclusive sense) paraphyletic. There were two possible nomenclatural revisions: 1) include the bog, wood, western pond, and spotted turtles together with the box turtles in one big genus, or 2) split Clemmys up. The researchers went with the latter option, probably because they wanted to leave the well-defined genus Terrapene alone.

Now, as for Emydoidea, I don't believe any one has suggested it should be included with any of the former Clemmys species; it is usually shown as being a basal sister lineage of the Clemmys-Terrapene lineage. In some reconstructions it is shown as the sister species of Emys orbicularis, the European Pond Turtle, so it could be moved to that genus, rendering it Emys blandingi.

I hope this was helpful.

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