Both genera are thought to have been derived from a Mexican ancestor, now extinct. The similarity reflects relationship, not parallelism.

The South American snake, Pseudoeryx plicatilis (Linnaeus), is similar to Farancia in many anatomical features as well as in habits. Females exceed the males in maximum size. There is sexual dimorphism not only in ventral and subcaudal counts, but also in ventral spotting. Known enemies include the indigo snake (Drymarchon), hawks, and commercial collectors. Nests, eggs, and thermal relations of the rainbow snake are described. This place is a sacred place near the Aboriginal Community of Wadeye in the Northern Territory. In north-central Florida, specimens are most active in March, June, and October but the species is fairly active all year in that area, and peaks of activity are not high as compared with those of most terrestrial snakes. The Rainbow Snake lives near the river at a location named Nimbu. erytrogramma lives in submerged roots of bald-cypress trees or beneath submerged man-made structures. abacura prey upon eel-like salamanders, Siren and Amphiuma. erytrogramma, as an adult, feeds almost entirely upon the common eel, Anguilla rostrata, while adult F. abacura, the former inhabiting alkaline (calcareous) to circumneutral streams, the latter frequenting acidic streams, ponds, and bogs. erytrogramma is ecologically separated from the sympatric F. erytrogramma have been found, the individuals thereof differing in color from inland specimens. seminola, new subspecies, is known only from Glades County, Florida, its range being disjunct from that of F.

erytrogramma ranges from extreme southeastern Louisiana and central Mississippi eastward into northern Florida, and thence northward through the Atlantic Coastal Plain to extreme southern Maryland. C.' A later restriction of the type locality to Alachua County, Florida, is unacceptable. The rainbow snake should therefore stand as Farancia erytrogramma (Palisot de Beauvois), 1801 type locality 'l'Amerique septentrionale,' restricted by Harper, 1940, to 'the lower Cooper River, in the vicinity of Charleston, S. The original spelling of the specific name, 'erytrogrammus,' although etymologically poor, was not an inadvertent error, and should not be emended to 'erythrogrammus.' The author of the name erytrogrammus was not Latreille but Palisot de Beauvois, whose 'Memoire sur les Serpents' was inserted in Sonnini and Latreille's 'Histoire Naturelle des Reptiles.' This work dates from 1801, not 1802. However, on zoological grounds the genus Abastor Gray, 1849, must be synonymized with Farancia Gray, 1842. The rainbow snake has been listed generally as Abastor erythrogrammus (Latreille), 1802.

Rainbow snake