Thats toooo far to go down to, so lets bring it up here, as there is a possibility of more nice pics and such.
Todd, I for some odd reason, do not think of western splendida has having cal king in them. First off, there are no cal kings for over a couple hundred miles to the west. There are arizona kings nearby.
You see, I have seen these western splendida for over forty years in nature. Which surely has allowed me to see a variable phenotype from a common genotype.
That is, a huge range of expressed patterns depending on the year or years. In the exact same area, there are prevailing phenotypes. But this is temporary. Year by year, we see different types, then back, then forth. It makes things a bit dicey to understand.
Theres this road, 20 miles from my house, that has kings. On the northern end, its mostly yuma type patterns, no cal kings. That is, extremely narrow yellow bands. On the southern end, there are Black kings and normal splendida patterns and goofy patterns. Rarely banded kings. But that has occurred. The problem is, there is no zone of intergration. That is, there is no blending area. You can pretty much seperate the two with a knife cut. But because they are kingsnakes, we tend to keep adding human emotions. You know, the absolute. Which is the problem, there is no absolute. Not even with cal kings.
I would rather think of it as, these populations as having a wider genotype and expressed phenotype, then some eastern populations. But they do not blend.
now back to our road, if you travel north then Yuma kings disappear and all of a sudden, theres another type of king, its huge and like a splendida but much bigger and darker, nearly black, in fact the adults are almost black. Then you go farther north to tucson and just west of tucson, then you find cal king types with wider yellow, but you also find a meshmash of all traits, I foundly call them Speedwayensis. A road in town. Once on here a person posted a pic of a king and asked what it was, I said, speedwayensis, and he said, how did you know where I caught it, I caught it on speedway. hahahahahahahaha lucky guess.
As you travel north out of tucson. You can forget all about splendida, its mostly wider banded yuma kings, I just hate to say Cal kings, cause its NOT CALI. Its arizona. If you travel east out of tucson, its mostly splendida, except once I found a perfect banded king right in the middle of perfect splendida. Within 10 miles of New Mexico. Whats up with that. Surely if that occurred in New Mexico, you would not call it a caliariznewmexico king. Or simply a banded king in the wrong place, considering the average phenotype.
It appears those terms are messing with our thinking, Genotype is a wide ranging term(particular with kings, think polymorphism)But those phenotypes, they are really cool as its something that actually gives up headackes.
Oh and that knife cut that seperates Yuma kings and splendida, someone is fooling with us as that line keeps moving forth and back.
The problem is understanding what makes a phenotype. For instance, in southern az, splendida is a grassland king. But our grasslands are few and far between. There are non-grasslands between the grasslands. The reality is, the last grasslands are just to the west of the said road above. Those grasslands(and their selection pressure) are most likely the stablizing factor for keeping splendida in that area.
A way to think of this is, kingsnakes are not continious across ariz. They are in pockets, across ariz. Some of these pockets are in traditional habitats, you know, a splendida in normal splendida turf. But, there are also splendida in pockets where the habitat has changed a bit and is no long traditional, so we see a range of phenotypes that either resemble other known types or not. The truth is, most do not actually resemble cal type kings, but we ignore them as we do not know what to call them.
about your pic, its a kinda dark snake and it appears to have a low band count. Odd for around here. Maybe it was not from around here. Cheers
