Posted by:
Phil Peak
at Sun Mar 7 08:58:04 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Phil Peak ]
This is an interesting subject foxturtle. I have always been intrigued by the small dot on the range map in southwestern Indiana and even thought about investigating it myself. Whenever I spoke with some of the herpers that were closer to the situation though the consensus seemed to be not a one of them felt it was legitimate. Of course this is all speculation. My thoughts on the topic are more a reflection of the opinions of these folks rather than anything else. As you mentioned the habitat certainly appears to be capable of supporting a population of bullsnakes but exhaustive searches at this locale have failed to produce additional specimens in spite of this. If these snakes did occur there the logical question would seem to be why are they no longer extant? If the habitat had been destroyed or severely altered this would offer a reasonable explanation but many of these intensive searches occured 20- 30 years ago and from what I was told the habitat was intact.
That was an interesting link that you provided. I have read that but it has been some years back. Since then it has been concluded that the eastern coachwhips in KY were the result of released specimens from the old Reptile Gardens near Mammoth Cave National Park and that this species is not native to our state. On the other hand the western pigmy rattlesnake has been confirmed as native.
The Tennessee Valley pine snakes are interesting as well. Some authors labled them as bullsnakes and others even as southern pines from the Natchez Trace area in Tenn. They are decidedly different than the typical northern pine in coloration but we suspect that this represents clinal variation as much as anything. We sent off a shed skin from a specimen from south central KY and it should be interesting to see how the DNA compares to some of the other melanoleucus populations from other regions.
Phil
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RE: From what I understood... - Phil Peak, Sun Mar 7 08:58:04 2010