Reptile & Amphibian Forums

how close are radio tower, Buffalo Creek, and Red Bluff to each other? Would they be considered Loma Alta? Would a Loma Alta snake bred with a Radio Tower be reasonably acceptable. There is no way in hell I would call it a locality pair, but could I at least call it a Loma Alta, or would 277 have to do? I cant remember any landmarks on 277 or Id answer the question myself. Thanks in advance
Smitty

Here's a link to a mileage chart that Hollister put together:

http://www.trans-pecos.us/

As far as what's acceptable for "locality" pairings...
It's a personal decision. Some folks have general locality collections... others more specific. I prefer mine as specific as possible.

Radio Tower and Red Bluff are both south of Loma and pretty close to each other. Buffalo is way up north of Loma.
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the pair will be an Adam Sweetman Red Bluff to a Hodgeson Radio Tower. Close enough. Not perfect, but I imagine a male could travel 1.5 miles in its life. I try to use the rule that if a pair wouldnt meet in the wild, they wont meet in my racks.

IMHO Radio Tower to Red Bluff is a good locality pairing. I consider everything from the Flashing Light to the South Picnic Area the same thing anyways. North of the South Picnic Area it gets more hilly and lush with the vegetation and I think the snakes have some slightly different tendencies but even then, not much. With the pairing you have in mind I would just call them South of Loma Alta's.

Cool. According to Hollister the two spots are 2.2 mile apart. Is the habitat pretty continuous? Do you think a dispersing male could travel between the spots, or meet a female somewhere in between?

Are you asking if the habitat between Radio Tower and Red Bluff is continuous? If so, the answer is yes. Probably not more than one or two hundred meters between any given cut in that area.

Buffalo Creek is 8 miles or so North of Loma Alta, Radio Tower is about 10 miles south, Carruthers Creek is about 12 miles south, and Red Bluff Creek is about 6 or 7 miles south.

That's without looking things up . . . during the season, I usually have the mileages "dialed" as I tend to hunt that road from the house.

Genetically-speaking, I doubt you could detect any noticable differences between these areas (in fact, I expect that the bulk of the upper Devil's River drainage, which includes Loma and all the nearby creeks as well as the Juno Road area, would be genetically indistinguishable from one another)

Troy