Quote Originally Posted by jason_ladouceur View Post
Admittedly the number of specimens I've seen in person is only a handful so I'll have to refer to your experience with them. And you might be very right about taxonomy. A good friend of mine keeps a decent sized group of Baroni. He of course has greens, a few blues and more recently acquired some brown specimens. It's truly amazing how much diversity there is just in that species.
The same is true with many other species - there is a noticeable variation is patagoniensis, aestivus, olfersii and viridissimus. I'd compare it to this: there is also noticeable variation in kingsnake and gopher snakes county to county in California - different patterns, coloration, etc. There is even a secret location in the Bay Area of pacific gophers that look like no other pac gophers anywhere else.

The variety is wide enough in psammophidea that I'd compare it as if we were to group all of the gophers into one species - instead of affinis, deserticola, annectans, etc.

Time will tell............