Quote Originally Posted by ConcinnusMan View Post
And yet the latin subspecies names applied under that obsolete method still apply.
Scientific names, not latin names. Most of them have Greek origins, including "thamnophis".

It's not true, by the way. Our newly acquired ability to measure the actual relationships between organisms has really shuffled the deck these last 10-15 years and now even single populations are getting reassigned to new subspecies.



The reason for latin names are apparent however. What you call a "common" garter seems to only apply to specific garters. It applies to all North American garters as far as I'm concerned. I only use the term "eastern" to apply to t.s.sirtalis or garters mainly confined to the east coast US.

to me, even a "Northwestern Garter snake" T. ordinoides, can still fall under the umbrella of "common garter snake". If I want to use common names to differentiate between the two, then T.s sirtalis is an "eastern garter" and a T. ordinoides is a "northwestern" To me, they are both "common garter snakes"
What's the point in further exacerbating the problems caused by trivial names, by using the same names as colloquialisms?