Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I picked this up at a show. Give me a guess what you think about the ssp.,

Thanks,
Gerrit

Lampropeltis

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http://www.lampropelten.de.vu

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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

They look like the old line of Hammock "oligazona" that was actually a stuarti x honduran or something.

Almost look like polyzona from Guatemala except they have really pronounced snout rings showing the stuarti in them.
L8r

I'll go with "abnorma" x "stuarti" because of the fairly high band-count, obliterated black bands, and the somewhat pronounced "V" shaped snout band.

I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, but are YOU absolutely sure what it is yourself?......I'm sure you can understand why I'm asking this.

best regards, ~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

Hey Doug,

nope you aren't a smart ass, at least not more then I am , I do know what it's origin is and when I'm gonna solve, there will some people be surprised.

Gerrit
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http://www.lampropelten.de.vu

Hi guys,

the animals in the picture are from het albino to het albino "honduran" breeding.
Nothing surprising you'd say cause there seem to be many hybrids in the "honduran" color morph scene today.

The problem might be, that those are F2's from the german original albino strain mixed with nothing else and yes, you are right, these are either polyzona or polyzona x stuarti animals. That means that all albino "hondurans" and its related morphs are nothing but hybrids, all the way. Each "het albino" and "het snow" is nothing but a hybrid.

I researched a long time on this cause many albino hondurans did look odd to some friends of mine an dme as well. When I started to search for them over here, I found the original breeder and the original stock cause a few het. animals stayed here.

When I started to read the stories in the US-mags about how the animals went over the pond I found the mistakes in translation and understanding.

The lines sounded like "the adults came from an importer in the netherlands, who brought them to the Hortenbachs". For sure they came from an importer and were imported animals cause they were imported from the Netherlands to the GDR (Eastern Germany). It was kind of paper work and more before the wall came down to get stuff over the border.
The animals were all the way captive born in NL why else could there be one imported animal and a year later another imported animal and both are het albino. Could they both have been het. albino wildcaughts? Hard to believe.

Why were they called hondurans anyway, that's pretty easy to answer. The guys who got those snakes saw a bigger chance in getting money out of it by calling them hondurans cause of all the possible morphs.

Hope you enjoyed the story and the step back in history,
Gerrit

Below is a real polyzona from Mexico.

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http://www.lampropelten.de.vu

That is an interesting thought. Where are the parents to this snake? It appears to be an adult, so why was this information about this snake not brought up before? Also, what other hybrids are you refering to? Here is an old post from 2003 that gives some history on the subject.

"Posted by: rtdunham at Sun Dec 14 20:37:34 2003 [ Email Message ]

(there's been a long discussion about hondurans, hybrids, crosses, etc., on the kingsnake forum. it seems more appropriate on this forum. in an effort to contribute some facts to the conversation the following is excerpted from Vol 7, Issue 5 of The Vivarium, "Honduran Milk Snakes, by Louis W. Porras):

(NOTE: if a parenthetical comment is mine it is so identified; otherwise parenthetical remarks are those of the author of the article, Louis Porras)

"...After the unification of Germany and broader exposure to other breeders in Europe, the Hortenbachs (TD note: in 1989 they hatched an albino baby from animals they believe were hondurensis) decided to make their breeding success public by presenting a paper at a herpetological meeting, and later by publishing a brief overview of their success. In that article they listed all subspecies of Lampropeltis triangulum in which albinism is known to occur. Included in that list was the taxon polyzona.

"In 1994 I was made aware of the existence of albino L.t.polyzona in Europe and received photographs of two specimens. Although the albino polyzona and hondurensis looked strikingly similar, I presumed this was to be expected, as both taxa have many overlapping characters in color, pattern, and scalation. The albino polyzona subsequently were imported into the United States by Brian Barczyk.

"Because of their resemblance to albino hondurensis, and to put to rest any questions future breeders might have, i asked my friend Helmut Hansen in Switzerland to investigate the origin of the albino polyzona. It was during this query that he discovered that in 1990 the Hortenbachs decided to thin out their collection and sold some of their 'normal' (i.e., non-albino) hondurensis to a friend. Unbeknowst to them, these snakes were taken to a prominent reptile dealer in the former West Germany. Rumor has it that the snakes were sold as polyzona because some of the specimens had a broken snout ring (a character which occurs both in hondurensis and poloyzona) and because polyzona is a rarer taxon in Europe and commands a higher price. Although this information must have dealt a severe blow to the aspirations of being the first to breed albino polyzona in this country, Brian Barczyk, the gentleman that he is, graciously accepted our findings and in a sense was glad that any speculation regarding the origin of the 'polyzona' was put to rest."

TD NOTE: the above represents three paragraphs from a fact-filled, six page article that cites Williams' Systematics and natural history of the American Milk Snake, and Wilson & Meyer's The Snakes of Honduras. It describes Porras' extensive experience with hondurensis here and in its natural range. There are 26 color plates. I'd urge anyone interested in knowing more about the hondurans to find a copy of this issue, perhaps in a library. Anyone believing they have more accurate information, or information that contradicts the published accounts, would serve herpetoculture by publishing the facts supporting their conclusions. IMHO.

Until then, I find Porras' credentials convincing, and his conclusions seemingly well documented and therefore persuasive.

peace
terry dunham
albino tricolors"

Thank you Terry!

Joe Exposito
Thoroughbred Exotics, LLC

Hi Joe,

well, I broke my head a long time about this. I never ever saw a broken snout band in a locality hondurensis, neither did anyone of the guys I asked about. It seems that this issue is just known in polyzona and probably abnorma. Even Williams speaks about a wide snout band. Look at the first albinos, none of them does have that issue.

The origine of my animals is the Hortenbach line that stayed in Europe and was thought to be polyzona by Barczyk. I never mentioned this before cause I wanted to have or see pics the original line better then albinos, I wanted the hets or poss. hets. Finally I got them on an expo last weekend.

The DNA-Analysis may save the Atlantic albino milksnakes.....but for now and with the systematics we do have today they are nothing else but hybrids.

Gerrit
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http://www.lampropelten.de.vu

Gerrit,
Like I have said to you many times "its to late" you can't change the world .LOL....
Also, nobody ever claimed them to be locale specific amels.

Even the anerys that were first produced were clearly not locale and were more than likely stuarti x hondurensis.

The first hypos produced were from a pet store snake labled coral snake so we have no idea of its origin.

I think the term Honduran is actually just a hobby term anyway.Show me just a wild type locale specific hondurensis? I think that there range is very small and there intergradation range is huge with several other subs.
I doubt that there pure range was ever even collected.Just because itsimported from Honduras doesn't make it a hondurensis but in the importers eyes its a honduran milk.

Also, look at Shores's amel splendida line.The amel was wild collected in southwest N.M and is clearly a intergrade (more splendida but still a intergrade) with cal king.

Its just a hobby term unless a locale is placed in front of it.

Shannon

While it is always best to have some locale specific info, there are certain phenotypic characters that do define most subspecies. I agree that some are harder to define than others in the absence of locality info.

But the term "Honduran" shouldn't be a hobby term.....although that is probably what it has turned into with all the crossing of polyzona, stuarti, hondurensis, etc. "Mutts" would be a better term

Way back when, there were the old breeders who captively bred various subspecies. Their "Hondurans" look different than today's "Hondurans". I have a certain phenotypic image of what hondurensis should look like, based on Williams' definition of it and pictures of locale specific animals in books.

The range of hondurensis encompasses the north and eastern halves of Honduras and Nicaragua. It is not a small area. Being subspecies, they can have a large intergradation zone and do naturally intergrade with stuarti and abnorma. Just two, not several. And yes, many times importers bring in intergrades between hondurensis and stuarti that have been collected in those intergrade zones and are labelled as whatever country they were imported out of. But that is where certain phenotypic characters can come into play to get a better idea of what those snakes actually are.

But in order to do that, breeders need to know what those phenotypic characters are...and while some do, a lot do not. There are still milks that show up on the classifieds that are misidentified because "that is what they were called by the seller" previously. Then they get bred together and throw really odd-looking offspring, but still labelled as "what they were sold as". Same goes for selling intergrades as "pure" when the breeder already knows that the adults are either not pure or are intergrades themselves.

Have you ever bought a Stuart's milk that was labelled as an Andean? How would you have felt if you bought that off the internet and then unpacked it at home to find it was nothing like what you thought it should look like? Would that then have just been a "hobby Andean"? No, it would have just been misidentified, plain and simple.

Scott

Scott, I agree with you on all accounts except one. I think the term hobby honduran fits because of all the morphs and none of them are able to be traced back to a locale.

Shannon

I agree that "hobby Honduran" may be a good category to put any of the multiple subspecies/cross bred "Honduran-resembling" milks into, knowing that they really aren't true hondurensis.

But what I was addressing was your comment "I think the term Honduran is actually just a hobby term anyway", which it is not. The term "Honduran" by itself defines that phenotype and characters described by Williams as hondurensis, just as the term Andean defines andesiana, Black defines gaigeae, Stuart's defines stuarti, Ecuadorian defines micropholis, etc.

I think I understand what you are saying. It sometimes gets confusing when assigning common English names to Latin scientific names.

And you wanted a wild type locale specific hondurensis? Here you go

Scott

Thats a awesome looking snake Bud,

L8r

@ Scott,

I'm glad to see that there are some locality hondurensis left today. It is really odd that one of the most famous snakes in the hobby is just a big fake of ssp.

@ Shannon,

I do think a honduran should be a L. t. hondurensis and then we do have a given large locality.

Whatever, when DNA analysis will be finished I bet they will be all the way albino atlantic coastal milksnakes and everything will be save.

Gerrit
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http://www.lampropelten.de.vu

Hm, dont count on the DNA analyses to clear things up much. The way they are done is to compare an unknown (say the "hobby honduran" to a known (say real hondurensis and atlantic costal). If you got pattern AAA from the unknow and the honurensis gave you pattern BBB while the atlantic gave you AAA, well then its simple. The unknown is atlantic.

But in reality its much more complicated, since genes move all around down there through intergrade zones there is almost certainly a mix of patterns in all populations. So, if you get pattern ABA from your unknown does that mean its 2/3 atlantic and 1/3 hondurensis and thus a mut? or, did you not sample enough wild hodurensis and therefor missed a population that has pattern ABA?

It gets even more complicated if you consider backcrossing. Say the orginal albino was not honduran but bred in to a pure real deal honduran. The hets are 50%, the hets are bred to each other to make more albinos which are also 50%. These f2 albinos are back bred to more hondurans (lets say they are cheaper or you want to make a tangerine albino). Back breed a few generations, more than 4, and now the animals are greater than 90% honduran. The test may not be senative enough to detect that level of purity.

Maybe it will, but dont expect a nice clean answer.

Best,
Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

Hi,

you are right, but what I wanted to say is that I do expect an eastern and a western population or species after DNA work is done and then we do have polyzona, hondurensis, abnorma and stuarti as one clade and . after that we are save with the morphs and mixed stuff all the way!

Gerrit
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http://www.lampropelten.de.vu

Yeah, I agree. If they are a closely related clade we are safe.

Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles