I'm not quite sure what you mean by one being a pine and the other being a gopher? From the studies I've read (references and links below) P. deppei and P. lineaticollis fall outside of both P. catenifer (gophers?) and P. melanoleucus (pine?) -- being more closely related to gophers than pines.



My main point: our concept of what's deppei and what's jani may be based on some extreme phenotypes of one or both subspecies. There may be wild jani that most in the trade would incorrectly call deppei (or vice versa). Furthermore - it's possible there are captive "deppei" with some catenifer ancestry - this may further skew our perception of subspecific differences in P. deppei.



I 100% agree there are clear average differences between the two subspecies of P. deppei, however other than Stull's study I haven't seen any work measuring subspecies variation in wild P. deppei which shows that the two subspecies can be confidently distinguished from one another.



I'm also not clear on using prefrontal scale counts to distinguish between "pure" P. d. deppei and potential P. d. deppei X P. catenifer. Quoting Stull: "A single specimen of deppei shows four prefrontals, however, while a very small percentage of specimens of sayi, deserticola, and catenifer have only two prefrontals."



Signs of hybridisation, or just variation within "pure" deppei?







Here's an example photo of a locality deppei from the north of their range (i.e. near catenifer), showing 4 prefrontals.



It seems possible (likely?) that these "P. d. deppei" with 4 prefrontals may be hybrids? It appears 4 is rare to find in P. d. jani (although count prefrontals on this photo of a "wild... jani")?



I think the answers to most of these questions is "we don't know" - and we probably won't until someone does the field work



References & PDFs:



1. Stull, Olive Griffith. 1940. Variations and Relationships in the Snakes of the Genus Pituophis. Bull. of the US National Museum. URL: http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/handle/10088/10216



2. Rodriguez-Robles, Javier A., De Jesus-Escobar, Jose M. 2000. Molecular Systematics of NewWorld Gopher, Bull, and Pinesnakes (Pituophis: Colubridae), a Transcontinental Species Complex. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. URL: http://faculty.unlv.edu/jrodriguez/21.pdf

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