Drymarchon couperi split

The name Drymarchon couperi has referred to all members of the genus in the past, but Drymarchon couperi (sensu IUCN) at the moment refers to snakes from Florida which are disjunct from Drymarchon melanurus which extends from Texas down into Central America

Reptile Database has gone with a paper by Krysko et al. (2016) who recently split Drymarchon couperi into two species. They retain the name Drymarchon couperi for snakes occurring in the north-eastern portion of the range (blue points) and suggest the name Drymarchon kolpobasileus for snakes occurring in the south-western portion of the range (red points).

I've taken a crack at adapting this figure into new ranges for D. kolpobasileus and D. couperi (sensu RD):

Currently, iNat is explicitly deviating from Reptile Database by treating all florida Indigo snakes as D. couperi (sensu IUCN).

Would folks be ok with rather going with Reptile Database in this case? Steps would be:
1) Create inactive taxa for D. kolpobasileus and D. couperi (sensu RD) (done)
2) split D. couperi (sensu IUCN). D. kolpobasileus and D. couperi (sensu RD)

Thoughts?

Posted on June 20, 2018 10:01 PM by loarie