"...what do you want for your wishlist- the animals or the literature?"

Well, both actually.

"You should contact Terry Vandeventer and ask to see pictures of his w/c male he calls "chocolate chip". That is a very light yellow animal. Occasionally offspring do hatch out reddish. I have seen it described in the literature and with my own eyes! As soon as I can find the article I will post it here. The reddish offspring gradually fade to yellow or brown."

Hmmm... Reddish hatchlings gradually fading to yellow or brown. Never heard of this before, but admittedly I suppose it could happen. Florida Kingsnakes can be quite reddish as hatchlings too. Please do post these articles if you can find them, sounds very interesting to me.

"One thing I think about the "literature", especially about these animals- the sample sizes in some studies, especially early ones consist of one or two animals. As science does, it always goes back to primary literature and quotes the datum or data over and over until there is a very rigid definition. I don't think it works well here as you can't really do statistics or define variation on a sample size of one or two. There is more variation present than what has been peer reviewed (btw some of the best info was published by TV/RY in popular herp magazines...) and at this point will be noted, maybe talked about but isn't going to be published."

Maybe so, but how does this help? I need unbiased and verifiable data to go on.

"This is not politically correct but some of this "lack of variation" is what makes this species a "species" and is the drive behind its conservation efforts. People aren't going to research/publish something that jeopardizes their job or funding ( that also goes for much bigger fish than this, lol)no matter how interesting."

I'm a zoologist myself (by education that is, not professionally), so you can take it from me. The payments aren't that good, LOL.

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