THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY

Reptilia    Squamata (part)    Colubridae  

Great Plains Ratsnake
Pantherophis emoryi (Baird and Girard, 1853)

SSAR 9th Edition Comments:
 See comment under P. guttatus.

Range maps are based on curated specimens and provided gratis by CNAH.
(Created by Travis W. Taggart; Version: 2024.11.16.12.47.52)
Download GeoJSON polygon range file: - 15.34 MB

Province/State Distribution:
USA: Arkansas Colorado Illinois Kansas Missouri Nebraska New Mexico Oklahoma Texas Utah

First instance(s) of published English names:
Emory's Snake (Coluber emoryi: Yarrow, Henry C. 1876. List of Skeletons and Crania in the Section of Comparative Anatomy of the United States Army Medical Museum for use during the International Exhibition of 1876 in Connection with the Representation of the Medical Department U.S. Army. Army Medical Museum, Washington, D. C. pp.); Emory's Racer (Coluber emoryi: Jordan, David Starr. 1876. Manual of the Vertebrates of the Northern United States: Including the District East of the Mississippi River, and North of North Carolina and Tennessee, Exclusive of Marine Species. Jansen, McClurg, and Company, Chicago, Illinois.. 342pp.); Emory's Racer (Coluber emoryi: Jordan, David S. 1878. Manual of the Vertebrates of the Northern United States: Including the District East of the Mississippi River, and North of North Carolina and Tennessee, Exclusive of Marine Species. Second Edition, Revised, and Enlarged. Jansen, McClurg & Company, Chicago. pp.); Gray Rat Snake (Elaphe confinis: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Gray Coluber (Elaphe confinis: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Spotted Chicken Snake (Elaphe confinis: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Emory's Snake (Elaphe emoryi: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Spotted Coluber (Elaphe guttatus: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Red Chicken Snake (Elaphe guttatus: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Spotted Racer (Elaphe guttatus: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Mouse Snake (Elaphe guttatus: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Corn Snake (Elaphe guttatus: Hurter, Julius. 1911. Herpetology of Missouri. Transactions of the Academy of Science St. Louis 20(5):59-274); Emory's Pilot Snake (Elaphe laeta: Strecker, John K., Jr. 1922. An annotated catalogue of the amphibians and reptiles of Bexar County, Texas. Bulletin Scientific Society of San Antonio (4):1-31); Rat Snake (Elaphe laeta: Taylor, Edward H. 1929. A revised checklist of the snakes of Kansas. University of Kansas Science Bulletin 19(5):53-62); Emory's Rat Snake (Elaphe laeta: Schmidt, Karl Peterson and D. D. Davis. 1941. Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada. C.P. Putnam and Sons, New York. 365pp.); Emory's Coluber (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Emory's Rat Snake (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Texas Rat Snake (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Western Pilot Snake (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Mouse Snake (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Rat Snake (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Prairie Rat Snake (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Emory's Racer (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Gray Rat Snake (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Spotted Mouse Snake (Elaphe laeta: Wright, Albert Hazen. 1950. Common names of the snakes of the United States. Herpetologica 6(6):141-186); Great Plains Rat Snake (Elaphe guttata emoryi: Schmidt, Karl P. 1953. A Check List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles. 6th Edition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. 280pp.);

Taxon Links:

  
Catalog of American Amphibians and Reptiles
  
The Reptile Database
  
NatureServe
  
iNaturalist
  
GenBank
  
USGS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database

Selected References:
1853 Baird, Spencer F. and Charles Girard. Catalogue of North American Reptiles in the Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Part 1. Serpents. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 2(5):xvi + 172
1942 Woodbury, Angus M. and Dixon M. Woodbury. Studies on the rat snake, Elaphe laeta, with descriptions of a new subspecies. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 55:133-142
1946 Burt, Charles E. Description of Elaphe quivira, a new ratsnake from Kansas. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 46(1):116
1950 Dundee, Harold A. The type locality for Elaphe l. laeta (B. & G.) . Herpetologica 6(2):55
1975 Thomas, Richard A. Taxonomic chaos: Elaphe guttata (Linnaeus), a case in point. Bulletin of the Maryland Herpetological Society 11(4):171-176
1983 Raymond, Larry R. and Laurence M. Hardy. Taxonomic status of the corn snake, Elaphe guttata (Linnaeus) (Colubridae), in Louisiana and eastern Texas. Southwestern Naturalist 28(1):105-107
1991 Seigel, Richard A. and Neil B. Ford. Phenotypic plasticity in the reproductive characteristics of an oviparous snake, Elaphe guttata: Implications for life history studies. Herpetologica 47(3):301-307
1991 Collins, Joseph T. Amphibians and reptiles in the upper Mississippi river valley: Systematic and distributional problems. Journal of the Tennessee Academy of Science 66(4):149-152
1994 Smith, Hobart M., David Chiszar, J. R. Staley II, and K. Tepedelen. Populational relationships in the Corn Snake Elaphe guttata (Reptilia: Serpentes). Texas Journal of Science 46:259-292
1994 Smith, Hobart M., D. Chiszar, J. R. Staley and K. Tepedelen. Populational Relationships in the Corn Snake Elaphe guttata (Reptilia, Serpentes). Texas Journal of Science 46(3):259-292
2002 Burbrink, Frank T. Phylogeographic analysis of the Corn Snake (Elaphe guttata) complex as inferred from maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 25:465-476
2007 Burbrink, Frank T. and Robin Lawson. How and when did Old World ratsnakes disperse into the New World? Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 43:173-189
2008 Collins, Joseph T. and Travis W. Taggart. An alternative classification of the New World rat snakes (genus Pantherophis [Reptilia: Squamata: Colubridae]). Journal of Kansas Herpetology (26):16-18
2024 Burbrink, Frank T., Edward A. Myers, R. Alexander Pyron. Understanding species limits through the formation of phylogeographic lineages. Ecology and Evolution 14(10):1-18
2024 Harrington, Sean, Isaac Overcast, Edward A. Myers, and Frank T. Burbrink. Pleistocene glaciation drove shared population coexpansion in eastern North American snakes. Molecular Ecology https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.17625:e17625

THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY — Accessed: Saturday 26 April 2025 23:41 CT