Mexican Rosy Boa Lichanura trivirgata  Cope, 1861

Taxonomic Comments:

Kluge (1993 Calabaria and the phylogeny of Erycine snakes. Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society 107: 293-351) placed this species in the genus Charina. Powell, Collins and Hooper (1998 A Key to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Continental United States and Canada. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence. vi + 131 pp.) recognized this lineage as a member of the genus Charina. Rodriguez-Robles, Bell and Greene (1999 Journal of the Zoological Society of London 248: 49-58) recognized the species trivirgata as a member of the genus Charina. McDiarmid, Campbell & Touré (1999. Snakes Species of the World. Volume 1. Herpetologists League, Washington, D.C.) agreed with the earlier conclusion of Kluge (1993) and Rodriguez-Robles et al. (1999) and retained this species in the genus Charina. Vidal & Hedges (2002 Higher-level relationships of snakes inferred from four nuclear and mitochondrial genes. Comptes Rendus Biologies 325: 977-985) resurrected the genus Lichanura for this species, returning the taxonomy of these boids to the way it was prior to Kluge (1993). Henderson, Robert W. & Robert Powell (2007. Biology of the Boas and Pythons. Eagle Mountain Publishing, Eagle Mountain, Utah. x + 438 pp.) followed Vidal & Hedges (2002) in resurrecting the genus Lichanura for this species. Dustin A. Wood, Robert N. Fisher & Tod W. Reeder (2008. Molecular Phylogenetics & Evolution 46: 484-502), using mtDNA and the evolutionary species concept, partitioned this taxon into two species, Lichanura trivirgata Cope, 1861 and Lichanura orcutti Stejneger, 1889. L. trivirgata retains the standard common name, Mexican Rosy Boa; L. orcutti takes the standard common name, Desert Rosy Boa. The authors found no evidence to support the continued recognition of the races L. t. gracia or L. t. roseofusca. Collins & Taggart (2009 Standard Common and Current Scientific Names for North American Amphibians, Turtles, Reptiles, and Crocodilians. Sixth Edition) submitted for consideration the proposal by Wood et al. (2008 op. cit.) to a snake systematist group composed of Frank T. Burbrink, Jeff Camper, Michael Douglas, Harry W. Greene, Toby Hibbitts, Robin Lawson, James R. McCranie, Brice P. Noonan, Christopher L. Parkinson, Theodora Pinou, R. Alexander Pyron, Javier A. Rodriguez-Robles, and Van Wallach, and a majority of those responding agreed. Standard common name for this species remains Mexican Rosy Boa.