>>It takes quite a few being released in a limited area to start a viable breeding population.



Not necessarily -- well, depending on what you mean by "quite a few". For instance, the entire European starling plague was started by a release of about 60 birds in NY's Central Park.



>>If it was started by a small number the effects on a single het in the population would be great.



Good thought -- IF there were hets in the released population, and IF the hets reproduced.



>>If it was started by a large number of founders then it would greatly increase the odds of hets being released.



But would decrease the effect of that het on the overall population.



>>If it was started by a very small number just a few animals by one or two people just a vary long time ago to get to the numbers we have now then why are we waisting all our time limiting people owning them because people are not letting them go it was an isolated event and has not been done for 20 years or so.



Good question! No good answer right now!



>>The other idea of a hurricane release if it was peoples personal pets then all morphs and hets would be there because it was not an intential release.



For this we go back to the issue of releasing low end snakes rather than high end ones, and earlier releases being less likely to have hets or morphs.



>>I think Toms theory is that a wholesaler in the area of the hurricane had many normals or fresh imports and was destroyed and a fairly large number of normals were released in one catastrophic event.



And this is entirely possible. We don't know one way or the other, yet.
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0.1 Peruvian rainbow boa (Amaru)

2.0 Brazilian rainbow boas (TBA)

0.3 Honduran milksnakes (Chicchan, Chanir, Hari)

1.0 Thayeri kingsnake (TBA)

2.7 corns (Cetto, Tolosa, TBA)

1,000,000.1,000,000 other critters

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