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Unregulated commercial harvest remains a major threat for turtles across the globe. Due to continuing demand from Asian markets, a significant number of turtles are exported from the United States of America (US). Beginning in 2007, several southeastern states in the US implemented restrictions on the commercial harvest of turtles, in order to address the unsustainable take. We have summarized freshwater turtle exports from the US between 2002 and 2012 and demonstrated that the magnitude of turtle exports from the US remained high although the exports decreased throughout the decade. Louisiana and California were the major exporters. The majority of exports were captive bred, and from two genera, Pseudemys and Trachemys. We review the changes over the decade and speculate that the increase in export of wild turtles out of Louisiana after 2007 could be a consequence of strict regulations in surrounding states (e.g., Alabama, Florida). We suggest that if wild turtle protection is a goal for conservation efforts, then these states should work together to develop comprehensive regulation reforms pertaining to the harvest of wild turtles.

The systematic relationships of snakes in the Lampropeltis mexicana complex (L. mexicana, L. alterna, and L. ruthveni) are poorly known despite several taxonomic studies over the last 80 years. Mitochondrial DNA sequences were used to infer the phylogeny of the L. mexicana complex. At least one representative sample from the nine currently recognized species of Lampropeltis was sequenced. Our results suggest that a deep basal split resulted in the divergence of two groups of Lampropeltis, with one group occupying the upland areas of western United States and most of western and central Mexico, and the other northeastern Mexico and the lowland areas of the southern United States. Results also revealed that the L. mexicana complex and Lampropeltis triangulum are polyphyletic, with taxa from both groups nested together in deeply divergent northern and southern clades. These results are incongruent with previous hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships based on morphology, and suggest that morphological characters shared among the various tri-colored Lampropeltis (e.g., hemipenal structure and tri-colored pattern) may be difficult to interpret phylogenetically.