Lyre Snakes Trimorphodon   Cope, 1861
An adult T. lyrophanes from Riverside County, California Image © Suzanne L. Collins, 2005
Taxonomic Comments:
Zaher, H. (1999. Hemipenial morphology of the South American xenodontine snakes, with a proposal for a monophyletic Xenodontinae and a reappraisal of Colubrid hemipenes. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 240:1-168) placed this genus in the subfamily Colubrinae, which is herein considered the Family Colubridae. Lawson, Robin, Joseph B. Slowinski, Brian I. Crother & Frank T. Burbrink (2005. Phylogeny of the Colubroidea (Serpentes): New evidence from mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 37: 581–601) demonstrated that this genus belonged in the subfamily Colubrinae, herein considered the Family Colubridae. Devitt, Thomas J. (2006. Phylogeography of the western Lyre Snake (Trimorphodon biscutatus): testing aridland biogeographical hypotheses across the Nearctic–Neotropical transition. Molecular Ecology 15:4387-4407) demonstrated that this taxon is composed of more than one species, but reserved dividing it up for a future paper. Thomas J. Devitt, Travis J. LaDuc & Jimmy A. McGuire. (2008. The Trimorphodon biscutatus (Squamata: Colubridae) Species Complex Revisited: A Multivariate Statistical Analysis of Geographic Variation. Copeia. 2008(2): 370-387) recommended that Trimorphodon lambda, Trimorphodon lyrophanes, and Trimorphodon vilkinsonii be recognized as a distinct species. 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 DeVitt 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.