The problem is based on subspecies, and by and large, that is a thing of the past. At least for now. Now, on a molecular level, they are all the same species with no subspecies. So to think of them as intergrades does not fit. Getula are polymorphic snakes and can express a range of pattern types thru out their range.
Another concept is geneflow. That was an assumption made by science. It was assumed that snakes simply crawled and bred who they came across. So genetic material would constantly spread. The problem is, snakes behaviorally inbred and with kingsnakes, are restricted to genetically isolated populations. If they out bred, you would not have grease kings and newporters, etc. Isolated color populations indicates, lack of geneflow with different S factors(selection factors) I hope this helps.

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