Posted by:
ginter
at Fri May 11 20:49:43 2012 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by ginter ]
Here is the history of those snakes.....
In the mid 1990's a friend of mine by the name of Adam Marty called to say he hatched out an odd looking bull snake (Pituophis c. sayi). I managed to travel out to his home town in MI and took a look at the snake. It was a nice example of nearly amelanistic hypomelanism. In other words the black pigment was nearly missing but present.
Adam got the two founder normal looking bull snakes from a friend who rescued them from a roundup in Stillwater OK. The claim was that they were wild caught and I believed that story. The two normal adults looked fairly beat up and had definitely been chewed on by a rat of two! I never knew the name of Adam's friend nor did we ever know the "vendor" or roundup participant that he got them from.
One could speculate that these snakes came from somewhere near there because what financial gain would the fellow have for traveling a great distance? However there is no locality data for this line. They could have been collected from that county, the next town over, or they could have come from TX.
The following year I ended up with the adults and all their offspring (Thanks Adam). I hand picked what I thought were the nicest ones and the rest were dispersed. These two hold backs parented all of the still waters out there today.
In this context The Stillwater Hypo refers not so much as a distinct locality but rather a blood line. In other words if I drive out to Stillwater OK and pick up a male bull snake to breed with my "Stillwater hypo" the offspring are not truly "Stillwater Hypos".
With that said however, who really cares and simple genetics tells us that we run the risk of getting negative traits if we continue to inbreed the line. I have an F2 pair that I breed that produce vigorous healthy offspring and I probably won't ever need to breed F3 for my collection so this is not an issue for me but it may become an issue. These two were my founders as older adults.
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RE: Hypo Stillwater Locality? - ginter, Fri May 11 20:49:43 2012 