>>Add a quick note to your website about your definition of "LOCALITY" and Whallah! No need for shed skins or retna scans or radio tags.





Yeah, that wasn't my point at all, Steve. Of course, no DNA is required to label a locality, as a hobbyist breeder. That's a given. My point is that several people have been called out on this forum, saying that 'their stock don't look anything like locality X, and so it must not be from that locality.' Some people have even been called liars in so many words (whether that's true or not, I've no idea).



What I'm saying is that there are MANY evolutionary reasons a snake (or any organism) can and will vary from the 'norm'. It can and does happen in the wild...it can and does happen with F1's. And regardless, as Aspidites was saying, the minute you remove a snake from the wild -- even if it's already gravid -- natural selection ends and artificial selection takes over, and you depart from what would have happened in the wild -- whether by you selecting your breeders or you imposing environmental pressure on the clutch with phenotypic plastic stimuli (for example, dampness of vermiculite, causing hatchlings to be darker or lighter in color, as I mentioned). However minute or hair-splitting the latter may seem, it's still true.



So yeah, even despite of those aforementioned things that we do (which are unavoidable) as breeders of WC animals, you can still call them locality, and your definition of locality may vary slightly from person to person. I certainly have what I'd call locality F1s, and I do sell F2s as locality animals.



As far as extracting DNA from shed skins, I suggested that, because, hey, we could collectively do the "field work" el cheapo for someone who wants to know what these things are actually doing in the wild. This has huge implications for conservation and management. So, although that information might confirm/refute what localities we think are related to each other, it probably wouldn't change the "locality breeding" hobby one iota.



Hope that clears my earlier statements. I can see how those might have been misinterpreted. (Hopefully this was a hair clearer? LOL)



Dusty

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