Good point Tim. I have always felt the color/tongue characteristics were weak as well. I have never personally read anything definitive to support the validity of E. o. rossalleni other than those characteristics and some range data. I suspect the "glades" may have BEEN a relict isolated group of yellow rats at one time in the Everglades that developed their own unique phenotypical expressions, but were never genotypically different from E. o. quadrivittata. Now that these areas are drained and accessible from the mainland forms, more dilution of the "glades" phase is being observed. An interesting point is that some of the discussions on the kingsnake forum are parallel to this one with respect to subspecies of the getula complex. Are we really only seeing geographical variation of the same snake similar to what we see in E. guttata over its wide range? Are there any distinct scalation differences to subspeciate the obsoleta complex other than pattern/coloration? If not, what is the basis of the subspeciation we see today? I am leaning to the thought more and more that our efforts as breeders to preserve subspecies is actually just preserving locality phases of the same animal. If you remove the coloration and pattern of a yellow, glades, black and texas rat and put those animals side by side, what would we deduce?? Please keep in mind some of these questions are a bit rhetorical and not really meant to be "answered", but interesting comments and insight from others are appreciated LOL!!!

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