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Posted by Ophidiophile on October 06, 2002 at 23:01:06:
In Reply to: Re: hybridization question posted by Terry Cox on October 06, 2002 at 19:05:23:
:The person is guessing. If you can hybridize an American Elaphe with a Lampropeltis or Pituophis (which are all supposed to be closely related), then you should be able to hybridize a Eurasian or Asian Elaphe with an American Elaphe.
Right. You SHOULD be able to do this given that they are in the same genus but:
(1) as you noted below, the american Elaphe may not remain Elaphe for much longer, and
(2) attempts at hybridization of American and Asian Elaphe that have been attempted to date have failed (of course that doesn't mean they won't be successful in the future but thus far there are no data supporting hybridization).
And I don't buy the idea American Elaphe are more closely related to Lampropeltines than Asian Elaphe.
I don't want to get too technical but thus far the data do not support separation (certainly at the generic level) of the North American Elaphe either from the Lampropeltines or Pituophines using the criterion of the biological species concept. Again current data do support their separation from the Asian Elaphe using the biological species concept. The question is far murkier (and may be precisely the other way around) using the evolutionary species concept, but in order to use that concept we need to know what traits are primitive versus derived in the different clades and I'm not at all certain that that's going to be very easy. It's entirely plausible to me that the snakes in America and Asia that are lumped as Elaphe represent convergence due to similar adaptations rather than derivation from a common ancestor nearer than that between American Elaphe and Lampropeltines.
:There's no evidence I know of that they can't hybridize artificially, as the American genera do.
It's hard to prove a negative (that they can't hybridize), but thus far it hasn't been done.
Some, such as me, even think there should be some divisions in species. For example, dione will probably be divided into numerous subspecies and maybe even several species eventually.
I think you're probably right about this.
:Can Eurasian and Asian Elaphe hybridize? I would think so.
Ditto!
Schulz ('96) said there were hybrids bt bimaculata and dione,
While I agree that many Asian Elaphe can probably hybridize, I'd be surprised at this one. Bimacs and Diones have different diploid chromosome numbers making the chance of successful hybridization betwen them somewhat remote (though not impossible). I have seen SO MANY chinese diones misidentified as bimacs and vice versa that it is equally plausible to me that so-called hybrids are just different variants of the same snake. But I could definitely be wrong about this. In any case I'd love to see definite proof of hybridization between these.
It's going to take a lot of effort on somebody's part to do the revisions and get the data needed, such as molecular studies. It will probably have to be done one small group at a time, I would think.
Agreed. the molecular genetic studies should yield a lot more believeable data that morphological studies.
DT
