I’ve been baffled by this complex for a while now, why does it exist? how did this come to be?
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My understanding is that there are some areas where it’s not really possible to determine the Pantherophis species from just a photo, at least based on current literature, and I also know some of the literature was/is disputed by some people. So a “species complex” on iNat was created to capture this ambiguity and allow people to ID the observation to a taxon that’s finer than genus.
See more about species complexes on iNat here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#complexes
You can also check out more recent discussion here: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/532159
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Everyone, including the snake taxonomists, is baffled by this complex. Just a complicated group of populations that doesn’t seem to fit well in any taxonomic arrangement.
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For iNat at least, the complex was added to help end an ongoing argument between snake identifiers. It got pretty ugly.
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