Nice John. I think your post may give clues to how the black phase originated. Those two animals you have there are quite dark. I think the black phase are naturally dark mex mex in which selective breeding brightened the orange. I think one could actually find black phase mex mex in the wild but they might be really rare.

With L. alterna very dark specimens are not that uncommon but they usually have brick orange that's heavily tipped with black. Still, as I'm sure you know, quite a few dark L. alterna have been collected that have both dark backrounds and extremely bright orange so I think it's possible with mex mex too.
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