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Its a 100% locality animal.no real tricks here.

Shannon

I might have to get a pair of those Jaliscos from you one of these days. Is this local usually that dark? I like it!
Thanks Shannon.
-Phil

You looked at the properties didn't you?LOL...you cheated.
Anyway,yes this line is from Lake Chapala from the state of Jalisco and they are very dark like this and stay pretty small.This may be the only true arcifera in the hobby.
The other ones I have listed on my site as jaliscos have actually keyed out ruthveni and they are locale animals also.They are from tapalpa Jalisco and thats probably why they got the name jalisco milks when they were first offered to the hobby from the Dallas Zoo.

Anyway,I like them both for different reasons.

Shannon

wow,i'll be honest,i was not thinking 'jalisco' on that first,dark one;very different looking from the two in your second post shannon(those are what i see as 'typical' arcifera)....but if what you say regarding their origin is accurate shannon,well maybe that's why,lol.

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"with head raised regally,and gazing at me with lidless eyes,he seemed to question with flicks of his long forked tongue my right to trespass on his territory" Carl Kauffeld

what are you using for 'keying out'-scale counts(dorsal?labials?)....are you also using more ambiguous stuff like triad/red band counts,snout pattern,etc...?(it's really time for a new book on the species,lol)
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"with head raised regally,and gazing at me with lidless eyes,he seemed to question with flicks of his long forked tongue my right to trespass on his territory" Carl Kauffeld

well,
the biggets thing is ventral scale counts.They are very important as well as head shape,head details,snout and yes red body rings (RBR'S).
Red body rings can be vague though.

There has also been some D.N.A done on those lake chapalas.They are pure arcifera even if we would like another better looking snake to be that.
Its a little late to change the world but they are what they are.
See the problem 20 years ago when the (hobby jaliscos) came in from tapalpa was that they looked much brighter and cleaner than the known locales of ruthveni and had enough RBR's to be jaliscos and they were from the state of jalisco (my big beef with common names).
So in essence they are jalisco milks but they aren't arcifera.
See the word arcifera meens "arch bearing" and the hobby line of jaliscos (just nice clean ruthveni from the extreme west of there region)don't have the arch bearing bands at all.They don't hardly ever cross over or widow out on the top.

Anyway,its very fun with all these locale animals.Without locality sometimes its impossible to I.D. a central or south american milk because there is so much intergradation.

Enjoy,
Shannon

I just want to add to some of what Shannon shared regarding the confusion regarding Lake Chapala L. t. arcifera and the brighter animals long represented as arcifera among breeders. The latter animals, as Shannon noted, were collected from Rancho San Francisco near Tapalpa, Jalisco, by a crew from the Dallas Zoo. It was during that time that Kenneth Williams' first edition of his milksnake opus had been published, and because L. ruthveni was still only represented by a single specimen (head/skin only), he regarded it as the same thing as L. t. arcifera. Thus, it was against that backdrop that these Rancho San Francisco animals were assumed to be arcifera. We now know them to be L. ruthveni, a distinct species allied with the mexicana group of kingsnakes. The relationships of the Chapala arcifera to other things must await further DNA detective work. But, what we can say for sure is that those nice, brightly marked tricolors shown in Shannon's pic are L. ruthveni and not a triangulum. There is more to this story, but that is the overall picture.

Cheers,

Bob

Thanks Bob.
This is great stuff.
Shannon