Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok...Here's my first draft.

I'm going off of the literature I have found. I'm very "iffy"
on rubidus...and on corais and melanurus deep into S. America.

This is by NO MEANS intended to be extemely accurate...just as a general guide.

I know I need to get more of SA in this...I need help.
All input appreciated.

Dean

Hey Dean,
Did your colors get screwed up on melanurus? It looks like it's showing up as blue in the key, but green on the map? Or is it just my stupid display screwing things up?

I'd like to see a bigger version of it. What you have so far pretty much matches what I know...like you I don't know a lot about rubidus or corais.

G

>>Ok...Here's my first draft.
>>
>>I'm going off of the literature I have found. I'm very "iffy"
>>on rubidus...and on corais and melanurus deep into S. America.
>>
>>This is by NO MEANS intended to be extemely accurate...just as a general guide.
>>
>>I know I need to get more of SA in this...I need help.
>>All input appreciated.

Hi Dean,

The S American forms need some correction:

- D. melanurus is also found along the entire Pacific coast of NW South America (coastal Colombia and Ecuador), where it is the ONLY species of Drymarchon. On the other hand, its distribution in northern Venezuela is a lot less ample than your map suggests.

- D. caudomaculatus: the dot is in the wrong place in NE Venezuela. It should be in NW Venezuela. See the map in my paper (link to via my home page below)

- D. corais is NOT found west of the Andes in NW S. America - only D. melanurus occurs there. Ont he other hand, it is found all the way through S. America east of the Andes down to southern Brazil.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Wolfgang
-----
WW

WW Home

!

Great start Dean. You might consider checking out the Illinois Natural History Survey's "Reptiles and Amphibians of Illinois" book (Dr. Chris Phillips from U. of Illinois is one of the authors). Although probably outside of the scope of your map, for each herp species, they show a map of Illinois that is color coded according to the following: 1) verified sightings 2) pre-1980 verified sightings and 3) I'm having a brain cramp; can't think of it but I will. This is interesting in that we can see how the populations have shrunk or have been redistributed. It also gives us some good information for conservation management strategies for possible reintroduction (I'm working with massasaugas). But, if your goal is to show where we actually know the various drymarchon exist, then I think what you have is right on. Great job and please send a final copy when you are done as I would like to put it by our eastern indigo exhibit due to open this fall.

Rob Carmichael, Director/Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center
City of Lake Forest Parks & Recreation (IL)

np

np

It's difficult to find information on all the Drymarchon forms in one place and difficult to find anything at all on some of them.

Dude, I have no input to help out. I do want to say I'm impressed with the effort. Thanks for the good work.

Doug T

I'm equally impressed. I'm also curious, what program are you using to design your range maps? I've been working on a copperhead website and I'm interested in doing something similar.
Thanks,
Chris

I used bits and pieces of vairous programs. I copied and pasted the a map from www.maps.com onto "paintbrush" to do the coloring work. Then I did an excel spreadsheet for the key...pasted it on the map...then saved it to a jpeg.

Does that make sense?

That makes sense....now whether I have the computer "know how" to do something similar remains to be seen.
Atleast with contortrix, I have accurate range maps that already exist to work from...drymarchon should be quite a challenge. Looks good so far.
Thanks for the tips,
Chris