>>Not at all. Ron Magill first and foremost is a joke in the reptile/animal community. He is a great showman, but is FULL of B.S. when it comes to animals.



Actually, he's got many years of herp experience. He started out at the Miami Serpentarium, and then worked his way up through the zookeeper and curatorial ranks at the Zoo. But since you yourself admit that albino burms HAVE been found in the wild, his personal qualifications are kinda irrelevant here anyway.



>>ALL SNAKES CAUGHT IN THE GLADES ARE RELATED. Out of 157 captures that were tested, 154 were DNA related, as in sister/brother/mom/father not lond distance related etc. That was one large population. The other three were not related to those, but were from a different locality, and were related to themselves. But of course you will not hear that.



You're kind of misrepresenting the results of this study. Yes, the population was, for the most part, genetically homogeneous -- but that does NOT imply a relationship as close as you are claiming. It simply means that there was not major segmentation in the populatio. As stated in the paper:



"The lack of genetic differentiation of most Burmese Pythons in ENP may indicate either a panmictic freely interbreeding population in the Park, or alternatively, limited genetic variation in the captive- bred populations that are the likely source of these snakes. "



"Our results indicate that the Python molurus bivittatus populations in Everglades National Park are not genetically structured. However, there are competing hypotheses for this lack of structure. It is possible that the python population in the Park is freely interbreeding or panmictic. There are no significant geographical barriers in ENP to this species as the Burmese pythons are adept swimmers and climbers, and radio tracking of individual snakes has revealed movement across large distances in the park (Mazotti et al., 2007). Alternatively, lack of genetic differentiation may indicate a population originating from a genetically depauperate source population in the pet trade."



Also, not to quibble too much, but there were actually 4 outliers found (not counting the control snake from a pet store) -- not 3. And no, the paper did NOT say that they were closely related to each other.
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0.1 Peruvian rainbow boa (Amaru)

2.0 Brazilian rainbow boas (Arco, Olho)

0.3 Honduran milksnakes (Chicchan, Chanir, Hari)

1.0 Thayeri kingsnake (Coatl)

2.7 corns (Cetto, Tolosa, Uce, TBA)

1,000,000.1,000,000 other critters

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