I never said that there hasn't been any crossbreedings. Since leucistic Black Ratsnakes cost about 4 to 5 times as much as leucistic Texas Ratsnakes, the reason to do this is obvious and I perfectly understand why you are so sceptical about leucistic Black Ratsnakes.



The existence of Rusty Ratsnakes in nature is another matter entirely. You say that if a genetic trait inherits codominantly, than it should not be rare in nature. Talk about bull butter... Actually, if the phenotype gets selected against, the codominant modus of inheritance may stop it from ever getting common. In fact, a recessive trait would have a much better chance of getting abundant in a genepool since its heterozygous carriers have as much chances of survival as any normal snake. Also, there are many examples of recessive mutant traits which seem to be even more succesfull than the normal, dominant genes from which they were derived. Take for instance melanism in vipers from the northern parts of Europe.



I have read the Bechtel article, but I don't see how it contradicts with the Rusty Ratsnake theory. I keep both the leucistic lindheimeri and the leucistic obsoletus, and I do believe that these snakes are different. But off course, there must have been a lot of crossbreeding. The way I see it, your story does not contradict with mine which, by the way, I did not makeup myself but have been told by many other well known ratsnake experts.

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