Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My husband and I caught a snake in Northern Nevada (Ely) this weekend. I think it is a Great Basin Gopher snake or a Sonoran. We have a Great Basin that was caught further North of there (still in NV though), but that one looks quite a bit different in pattern and color.

Which type do you think this snake is?

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Close-up head pic..

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very nice looking snake. It is a great basin gopher (pituophis catenifer deserticola). Athough there is an intergration zone between P.c.affinis and deserticola the locality of that snake is well north of the zone. I am starting to understand deserticola as a subspecies with quite significant pattern variabiliy. It gets genetic input from two if not three distinct suspecific taxon which may contribute to the pattern plasticity.

BTW, I just saw images of a P.l.l that was legally collect by an institution. The animal really looked to me as if it could represent an intergrade between lineaticollis and deppei. which would suport the combining of those two as historically represented............ P.d.lineaticollis. Ok so what do we do with gibsoni now?

I did not get the collection locality info or any info on how representative that individual is to the local population.

Id like to see what that integrade would look like.
Thanks

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Dennis McNamara
Crazy Fools Reptiles
Desnakemon@cox.net

The image that I saw was pretty poor and the image is not mine to post but I will work on getting permission to post a better image of the animal. It was totally in late blue when photographed.

I'll keep you posted. cheers, ginter

That snake is definitely a Great Basin. Sonoran Gopher snake (P.c. affinis) range is further south, ie. southeastern CA, and AZ. I may be wrong, but Great Basin Gophers (P.c. deserticola) probably have the largest range of any of the North American Gopher snake ssps., ranging out from CA, into Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Northern AZ, and even up into Canada.

reako45

Thank you! People are saying Great Basin on the other forums where I posted this as well. SO, I guess I have 2 Great Basins now, but both look quite different. I'm OK with that

Here is a pic of the one that we caught a few years ago.

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Ginter's right about pattern variability by locale. All you've gotta do is check out the Great Basins Jason Nelson's awesome sight @ Envy Reptiles (practically a right of passage for all Pit lovers on this forum) to see the wonderful amount of natural variability from locale to locale that exists in this ssp. What locale is the other GB in the 2nd pic from? Still Ely Nev.? Here's pics of my 2 deserticola fems.

East Lancaster:

The other from W. Lancaster

The second one that I posted a picture of was found further North than the first.... close to 2 hours North of Ely, NV.

I'll go check out that site you mentioned right now!

A few months ago, we caught another snake in the Ely area, but up in the mountains (not down in the desert like the first one pictured). We didn't keep this snake. I thought it was a bull snake, but maybe I am wrong. Is this a bull or a gopher? It's not a great picture, sorry about that.
Forgive me, I'm [personally] just getting into this kind of snake and I really like them... I'm trying to learn!

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That too is a Great Basin Gopher Snake. Two good books to have are the Peterson Field Guides for herps. The Eastern one is by Conant, the Western guide by Stebbins. Both have range maps, texts, and photos, two good books to have. Hope this helps.

Bart Bruno

Yeah, like Bart says that is definitely a Great Basin Gopher. The markings, esp around the back of the neck are textbook deserticola. From the pic that snake's pattern looks alot cleaner than the previous two. Good looking snake. It's great that you're into Gophers. They are an awesome representative of Pits here out west. Happy herping.

reako45