If you aren't aware - there's a region down in south eastern Arizona where the getula have gene flow from all three subspecies.



See range map 153 in Stebbins 3rd Edition.

In northern Mexico just below the Arizona border, MBKs and Cal Kings have a contact area and probably naturally intergrade.



There's a lot of speculation that the former Baja getula were MBK historically and Cal King influence came down into Baja.



Western getula are western getula, the classification systems we use are for our benefit and getula subspecies were originally described primarily based upon expressed phenotype, before the wonder of DNA analysis.



In fact - striped Cal Kings and Banded Cal Kings used to be different subspecies - I believe the Banded were Lampropeltis getula boylii.



Do you have a problem with all of the aberrant Cal Kings that result from mixing the two? The aberrant Cal Kings seem to have a much smaller survival rate in the wild, as they are not terribly common as adults even in places where both forms exist. So the very pretty and highly desirable aberrant Cal Kings that fetch ooohs and awes here are not representative of the natural species even in the slightest.



What's the difference between them and what I produced?



If in the next few years, the three western getula are reclassified into a single subspecies (or perhaps different species from Eastern getula) - will that taxonomical change alter your opinion on this cross?



What's your opinion on Brooksi x (classic) Floridana? They use to be considered different subspecies as well.



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In the GTP market - there are many breeders who provide a pedigree back to import, noting the locality of the import. You can be careful with GTP without too much effort, even if the ancestry has gone through many breeders.



Same thing is happening in the Corn snake market with the ACR - it's just getting off the ground still, a few big breeders (IE Kathy Love, Joe Pierce) seem to have all or most of their stock registered - though Joe Pierce has stated he often does not register special projects until he is ready to go public.



However - for all the "purity" talk here at this forum - it seems the only getula that come with any kind of pedigree are from a few people who breed their wild caught stock.



Here's a suggestion -



www.iherp.com/



It's a fairly new herp tracking website. While the code isn't as of today completed yet, pedigree tracking is a big part of what that site is trying to accomplish.



Register your animals there - it's currently free to do so. Keep track of who gets in the sac with who, and we can have pedigrees readily available for the purity only folk who are interested in keeping their bloodlines free from contamination.



Of course, you have no way of knowing whether the great great grandfather of your "pure" cal king was a pac gopher or not, the gene flow of that hybrid does happen - in the wild. Rare but happens.
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