WebSlave

That will likely change sooner or later. Seems to me that a while back all the neotropical milk snakes were grouped under Lampropeltis polyzona.

Used to be that the incentive to use the Latin names was because using common names was too confusing.

When I lived in Maryland a LONG time ago, I knew a guy who was hell bent to try to determine a new subspecies of the timber rattlesnake and was literally splitting scales in that pursuit. Not sure if he was ever successful, but he sure was trying hard. Ah, Herb Harris was his name. Took a while to bring that memory up to the surface. I met him at the Maryland Herpetological Society. He took me on probably my first official snake hunt that wasn't my mom driving me there. Yeah it was a LONG time ago. Anyway, we went to western Maryland looking for timber rattlesnakes, of all things. I remember there was a bunch of us in that outing, and we all spread out in a clearing in a small valley after parking the cars. In the center of this clearing in full sunlight was a moderately sized piece of tin. Everyone knew that there couldn't possibly be anything underneath it, so they all just walked right past it. Except me. What did I know? I flipped it over and yelled out "TIMBER!!" when I saw that gorgeous animal underneath. Man, did everyone come running then!

Anyway sorry about going off on a tangent. Odd things will trigger memories for me.

But anyway, I will still stick with the subspecies naming because it does seem useful to help identify what a person is talking about. People are changing the Latin names way too often for me, and to be perfectly honest, I just think people are trying too hard to shove an analog world into a digital filing system.