As mentioned above. Melanism occurs in kings. Where Joe goes silly is, He believes in what he read. And to believe that, he HAS to believe in the range maps Hubbs published. So if anyone disagrees, its an attack on Hubbs and Joe. The problem is, Hubbs maps are not great. They are average shaded maps, the problem with that is, they do not show exceptions and there are lots and lots of exceptions. Particularly with So called MBK's which is pretty much a deli cup name. Todays interpetation of MBK is based on deli cups, not the animal in nature.
The original description was poor and no one actually studied the animals. Which was commonplace in the old days, you found a different looking snake, publish it.
The majority of black kings came from the Ortiz area and the majority of those have neonates that were splendida patterned, Of those, some turned black, some did not. In the Ortiz area, there are also adult splendida patterned animals. In fact, the farthest south animal from Coastal Sinaloa was a splendida type.
Black neonates from MBK's were selectively bred in order to better sell them. As folks did not like buying speckled black kings and hoping they would turn black. In a nutshell, todays black kings are deli cup based on selective breeding, but do not represent what was in the field. What is in the field is always right, what is in books is sometimes right. Or not. The truth is, its the exception to rules that define the rule. In this case, there are too many exceptions. Cheers

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