Thanks, Mike.

I've seen Diadophis flare the lip a little, and I've seen the saliva droplet they produce, but never with the jaw strongly flattened out like this, and never with the rearing behavior.

If you don't mind telling me, what about the neck ring is different from pure edwardsi? Is it the dark edging, the width, or something else? I was just going by the ventral pattern as far as subspecies designation (and I understand that all the specimens in an intergrade area are themselves intergrades, whatever they look like; I should have been more clear and stated that the animal had an edwardsi-like ventral pattern).

As far as adult size- I've caught ringnecks in East TN, which is supposed to be entirely within the range of edwardsi, and the size seems to vary a lot with elevation- big snakes (to 20" or more and stocky) in the mountains and smaller ones (13" or less, and usually quite slim)at lower elevations; I always assumed this was due to the greater concentration of salamanders in the mountains. The Middle TN intergrade area snakes also reach 13", but such snakes are not very common; 6-9" is typical.

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