Booidea


The Booidea, also known as booid snakes, are a superfamily of snakes that contains boas and other closely related boa-like snakes. As of 2017, Booidea contains 61 species, including the eponymous Neotropical Boa constrictor, anacondas, and smaller tree and rainbow boas as well as several genera of booid snakes from various locations around the world: Candoia from New Guinea and Melanesia, sand boas from northeast Africa, the Middle East, and southwestern Asia, Charina and Lichanura from North America, Ungaliophis and Exiliboa from Central America, Acrantophis and Sanzinia from Madagascar, and Calabaria from tropical west-central Africa.
Many snake biologists choose to recognize at least Calabaria as a member of a separate family. The taxonomy of boas, pythons, and other henophidian snakes has long been debated, and ultimately the decision whether to assign a particular clade to a particular Linnaean rank is arbitrary. The clade name Booidea emphasizes the relatively close evolutionary relationship among these 61 species, which last shared a common ancestor about 68 million years ago, in contrast to the more distant relationship between booids and their next closest relatives, pythonoids and uropeltoids.