Rat Snakes Traits - Category upgrade! [DONE] [1564]

A post was merged into an existing topic: Skink traits - Category upgrade! [DONE]

Spotted some Eastern rat snakes in the Western rat snake category just now as well.

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@eaglereptiles Would it be ok for me to flag all of the animals not in the right categories? Like half of the snakes in the Western rat snake category are Easterns.

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Something that will be much easier for the both of us. Can you just tell me the common species names of the ones in the wrong place? It saves us both going through individual ads.

We can bulk move them by name into the correct place.

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Black, everglades, yellow, and greenish rat snakes. Some of them are just marked by their mutations in the title though. So that makes it a little harder.

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@eaglereptiles We now have people posting new eastern rat snake adds in the western category because they think they belong there.

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@osbornereptiles I asked your buddies Matt Most & Clint Bartley to come over here and tell us what they think should be done. I just made a large subcategory update, but am waiting on their input to proceed. Thanks!

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Hey all! I know I’m late to the party and I truly apologize! Ashley’s post earlier is pretty spot on in terms of current taxonomy classifications with a little adjustment. Currently, Texas rats (lindheimeri) are no longer recognized as a subspecies of P. obsoleta but are lumped into obsoleta (western rats) as a whole. The hurdles/issues we are currently running into is taxonomy classifications vs hobby acceptance. There are many in the academic community that take issue with the Burbrink paper (the paper that created the change) due to sample size and other factors. There may be conflicting papers published in the coming years that most likely alter, yet again :roll_eyes: the classifcation of north amercian rat snakes. However, as it currently stands the Burbrink paper is the standard. Outside of academia, most rat snake breeders HATE the classification as we find it hard to swallow a black rat snake and everglades rat both being P. alleghaniesis and loath the crossing of them (to each their own in that regard.)

I think the best way for us to have both accurate scientific classification listed (whether we agree with it or not) as well as satisfying the hobby’s want for segregation of the former subspecies in a classified ad format, is to actually create the categories off the list Ashley has provided above. The only changes/additions I would recommend, just to keep us scientifically accurate, would be to drop lindheimeri (but keep the Texas ratsnake category) and add Western rat snake (Pantherophis obsoletus). Hopefully this would satisfy both camps and keep things nice and clean in the event the taxonomy does change again!

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Just to put it all in one place with the slight adjustments to Ashley’s list, I think we should have the categories as:

Black rat snake (Eastern rat snake): Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Yellow rat snake (Eastern rat snake) : Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Everglades rat snake (Eastern rat snake) : Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Greenish rat snake (Intergrade Eastern rat snake) : Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Gray rat snake : Pantherophis spiloides
Baird’s rat snake : Pantherophis bairdi
Emory rat snake : Pantherophis emoryi
Western rat snake: Panterophis obsoleta
Texas rat snake (Western rat snake) : Pantherophis obsoleta
Fox snake : Pantherophis vulpinus
Corn snake : Pantherophis guttatus
Western Green rat snake : Senticolis triaspis

The final idea on cleaning up the category labels, perhaps listing them as Black Eastern, Yellow Eastern, Everglades Eastern, Greenish Eastern, etc and then the morphs would of course fall into place within the categories.

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