Posted by:
Sunherp
at Wed Sep 9 10:45:46 2009 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Sunherp ]
Though I may be prematurely “rocking the boat”, here, I’ll chime in.
First, I'll have to agree with Doug, Shannon, and others. What we've got for Hondurans in the hobby is a mix of snakes from different geographic areas. Latin American milks (all triangulum, for that matter) have broad zones of intergradation, and some of these zones may be broader than the ranges of the morphologically "pure" forms.
Second, I wouldn't be surprised to see hondurensis, abnorma, stuarti, and maybe even oligozona all sunk into polyzona in the near future. This is in light of new and up-coming research into the relationships of these "subspecies", and the evidence to suggest that the minor differences we see are due to clinal variation, not insipient speciation (population divergence). If future genetic and morphological data support this hypothesis (as it seems it will), all of our "Hondurans" will be polyzona (as they were until Williams’ publication in 1978), and they'll all be "pure". Perhaps we should begin referring to our captive "Hondurans" as "Meso-American Milks"?...
I figure this is an appropriate time to discuss Williams’ work, too. While it’s undeniably the best thing we’ve got, and is comprised of data from more Lampropeltis triangulum specimens than have ever been examined, it’s not perfect. Our understanding of inter- and intra-specific relationships has come a long way since the late 1970’s. It should also be noted that his splitting of many populations into multiple subspecies has been highly criticized in academic literature (Harry Greene’s critical review is but one example). Williams’ work is great, and a must-have for the Lampro-nut, but isn’t the be-all and end-all.
-Cole
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In all honesty... - Sunherp, Wed Sep 9 10:45:46 2009