What's in a name?

Hi, this is a 'natural history' thing than field herping.

Are corn snakes suffering from multiple personality disorder?

I recently read this;

"Pantherophis guttatus formally known as Elaphe guttata
Some books and websites will refer to the corn snake as Elaphe guttata. After extensive research by groups of scientists and herpetologists, the genus and species (binomial nomenclature) of the corn snake was renamed in mid 2004, changing the snake’s name from Elaphe guttata to Pantherophis guttatus. This change was necessary because scientists found the corn snake more closely related to the genus Pantherophis than Elaphe. The full article describing this change was published in the July 2004 issue of Reptiles Magazine.
Taxonomy: Kingdom: Animalia
• Phylum: Chordata
• Sub-phylum: Veterbrata
• Class: Reptilia
• Order: Squamata
• Family: Colubridae
• Genus: Pantherophis
• Species: guttatus"

So I decided to Google it and sure enough, Corns are going by both. Had anyone heard of this? Was news to me..

Thanks

is there any online source that shows like a really extensive tree of snakes and how they are categorized?

can't be that hard?

Not off hand, but certainly a quick Google should find some….

I had checked a few databases for this ‘new’ name one was https://app.isis.org/abstracts/abs.asp which you can peruse by Genus etc… it’s a DB for locating animalia in captivity (zoos and research facilites yada yada). It had no references of the new Corn snake naming.

Google ‘Snake Taxonomy’

Let me know how that works out. If it doesn't, let me know and I can see what I can find.

Yeah you can find them under both names. I believe Kathy covers that in here book as well. I will have to find the post where that was discussed as well as some info on the tree your asking about. I'll post when i find something.