Elaphe vs Pantherophis

What is everybody using now???

We use Pantherophis. I like the distinction from Eurasian Elaphe

Originally Posted by ldydrgn

I like the distinction from Eurasian Elaphe

Same here

I agree. I have my database set up as Pantherophis for guttata and obsoleta...

Pantherophis.I especially like how it decribes the blackrat.You know,black.Like a Panther!

whether pantheropis or bogertophis........a soboc will be called Elaphe subocularis by us old guys ! Catch my drift ? LOL !~

Hello?
Below is a sample of the type of "analysis" that is being used today to invalidate and reshuffle once familiar species and subspecies of North American snakes. Am I the only one that finds this bio-jargon filled, reliance on therories about mtDNA data questionable?

"Most phylogeographic studies have used maximum likelihood or maximum parsimony to infer phylogeny and bootstrap analysis
to evaluate support for trees.Recently,Bayesian methods using Marlov chain Monte Carlo to search tree space and simultaneously
estimate tree support have become popular due to its fast search speed and ability to create a posterior distribution of parameters of
interest. Here,I present a study that utilizes Bayesian methods to infer phylogenetic relationships of the cornsnake (Elaphe guttata )
complex using cytochrome b sequences.Examination of the posterior probability distributions con firms the existence of three
geographic lineages.Additionally,there is no support for the monophyly of the subspecies of E.guttata .Results suggest the three
geographic lineages partially conform to the ranges of previously de fined subspecies,although Shimodaira –Hasegawa tests suggest
that subspecies-constrained trees produce signi ficantly poorer likelihood estimates than the most likely trees re flecting the evolution
of three geographic assemblages.Based on molecular support,these three geographic assemblages are recognized as species using
evolutionary species criteria:E.guttata ,Elaphe slowinskii ,and Elaphe emoryi..."
Frank T.Burbrink
Department of Biological Sciences,206 Life Science Building,Louisiana State University,Baton Rouge,LA 70803,USA
Received 1 November 2001;received in revised form 17 May 2002

Here is the link:
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/~fbu...20Burbrink.pdf


In the scientific process common names such as "Black Ratsnake" "Gray Ratsnake" and "Cornsnake" are being disposed of as invalid. Personally I am particularly troubled by the redefinition of Elaphe ssp. What was a clearly defined division of subspecies, based on readilly apparent field characteristics, has been redefined into new subspecies based on mtDANA evidence - something indistiguishable in the field - and quite out of touch with those readilly apparent field characterisitcs. This may be fine for those equipped with a portable DNA lab - As for me I'm sticking with my Conant.

Pantherophis? Elaphe alleghaniensis? BAH!

JPD

Thanks for the info John. I had no idea this was how they were determining species and subspecies. Strictly based on mt-DNA would make it difficult to make any determinations in the field.
Thanks for the info and I am sure everyone here learned a thing or 2! I know I did....

Sorry, guess I got on a bit of a rant.
Really, in the long run it doesn't matter what we name them - they know who they are!
Cheers, and Elaphe obsoleta obsoleta!
John D

I'm actually going to be submitting a paper soon where my experimental animal is Elaphe guttata, and I call it just that; IMHO the split is invalid.

Frankly, I'm extremely skeptical of most molecular phylogenies for several reasons. First and foremost, many use only a single gene, which makes reliability very questionable. Secondly, most use models of genetic change through time, and, as someone wiser than me once said, "All models are wrong, but some are more useful than others." Last but not least, I'm unconvinced of molecular phylogenetic methods' ability to accurately resolve relationships between distant taxa.

An excellent example of how the last is a problem comes from mammal phylogeny. Thanks to lots of fossils, we've had a pretty good idea of how mammal orders are related for quite some time. Then some molecular folks use their techniques and get a totally different result. For a while, everyone's pulling their hair out about which is right and why. Then some very smart individual realizes that molecular approaches can only sample living species; that person then ran a phylogeny program with the data from all the extinct taxa deleted, and the results matched the molecular results. In short, because the molecular folks can only gather data from extant taxa, they're very likely to be wrong about old taxa. Now, while this pantherophis stuff is only at the genus level, most colubrid genera in North America have been around since the Miocene, around 20 million years ago, long enough for me to be skeptical about a phylogenetic technique that only samples modern taxa.

The sad thing is that thanks to this over-reliance on molecular phylogenies and their tendency to get refuted within a few years (if not mere months) after their publication, it's actually become *easier* to talk about animals by their common names, even in a scientific setting. Dozens of times my prof and I have played "match that snake" in order to figure out what species one of us is talking about because its name has been changed so many times.

Anyhow, that's enough crankiness from me for today...

Henry