Museum of Natural History Vol. 10, No. 10, pp. 599-610, 1 pl., 1 fig. May 2, 1960...

University of Kansas Lawrence 1960 University of Kansas Publications, Museum of Natural History Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Henry S. Fitch, Robert W. Wilson Volume 10, No. 10, pp. 599-610, 1 pl., 1 fig. Published May 2, 1960 University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED IN THE STATE PRINTING PLANT TOPEKA, KANSAS 1960 28-2493...

As a part of a study of the herpetofauna of the Mexican state of Michoacán an attempt was made to ascertain the interspecific and intraspecific relationships of the various populations of Pituophis there. Field work in Michoacán revealed that two supposed subspecies of Pituophis deppei were sympatric. This discovery led to the examination of all available (124) museum specimens of these snakes. I am grateful to the following persons who permitted me to examine specimens in their care: Charles M.

Duméril (1853: 453) described Elaphis deppei from a specimen in the Leiden Museum from "Mexico." This specimen, according to the type description, has 233 ventrals and 67 caudals. In 1863 Jan described Pituophis deppei var. pholidostictus , also with "Mexico" as the type locality. Subsequent authors (see synonymy of P. deppei deppei in Stull, 1940: 25) have treated pholidostictus as a synonym of deppei . Smith and Taylor (1950: 334) restricted the type localities of deppei and pholidostictus to

Snakes currently assigned to Pituophis deppei differ from other members of the genus by possessing two instead of four prefrontal plates. The subspecies of P. deppei have been defined on characters of coloration and scutellation. Scutellation. —The only scale characters utilized in the present study are the numbers of ventrals and caudals. The number of ventrals varies in the total sample from 210 to 246 ( Table 1 ); usually the variation in one locality is no more than 15. Number of caudals var

Study of Pituophis deppei ( auctorum ) revealed the presence of sympatric populations of two distinct species of Pituophis differing from each other in scutellation and coloration. The nomenclature resulting from the required rearrangement necessitates the recognition of 1) deppei as a species, 2) jani as a subspecies of deppei , 3) lineaticollis (with brevilineata as a synonym) as a species distinct from deppei , and 4) gibsoni as a subspecies of lineaticollis . Known geographic distributions o