....provided to you, yet you still oppose even the most concrete evidence. Why ask questions if you continually shrug off information provided to you by people more knowledgeable than yourself concerning the topic at hand? This is not meant to be mean-spirited question, but simply one that should be taken for what it is. As a PhD student in the field of ecology and evolution I am regularly involved in the education of undergraduates. Honestly, if I had a student ask me the same question such as you have asked us here as many times as you have, and if that student were to repeatedly appear to shrug off my sought after knowledge, I would simply discontinue my attempts to educate that student. My decision to stop any effort to properly educate the student and answer their questions would not be based upon a lack of desire on my part, but instead because I would simply feel as though any answer I would give would not be adequate (even though my response would be based upon my years of experience surrounding the topic at hand). Sometimes there are "lost cause" instances, and sadly I find your handling of this topic to be one of those instances.



My PhD studies involve a massive breeding study with the California mountain kingsnake as my research species. I have worked with this species continually for over 1.5 decades (both professionally and as an avid hobbiest). I can, from hands-on experience alone, easily identify localities from all around the state just by sight. My ability to do so is based upon thousands of hours of working with this species. Within those thousands of hours I have found that many of the meristical (scale) information in print regarding the CA mtn king are profoundly incorrect. Furthermore, most of the information used to 'correctly' identify each subspecies of CA mtn king are fully interchangeable and useless. My work (which will be published within the next year) will demonstrate that the majority of characteristics used to....

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