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Has anyone tried to cross the California kingsnake with the Mexican black kingsnake? According to Blaney, the Yuma kingsnake (yumensis) is not a valid subspecies, and that the narrow banded kingsnakes are the result of L. g. nigritus intergrading with L. g. californiae. I would be neat to be able to come up with yumensis by crossing californiae and nigritus, but I doubt that it is so simple.

So, has anyone tried to cross these two kings?

Yes indeed...everything old is new again! That has been done many times, and the hatclings I saw did indeed resemble the "yumensis" morphs. I enjoyed the post by Shannon and others, notice the "yumensis" he posted compared to the Salton Sea/Calipatria specimen? Both dark but different, they vary even in the wild. Quite a bit of variation, it would probably vary depending on the gene pool of the sire and damm, as kings are so darn variable in morhpology, even wild ones. vic h.

did it a long time ago.....they look ,maybe ,sorta kinda like some yuma kings......pet shop near here had alot of yuma kings back then.don't know what they really were.....but there was a close resemblance to them all yet all kinds of variations....

.....check out Shannon's real yuma pic in here somewhere....it is not like the pet shop or the crosses....it's darker and has a different face....from what I remember......
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Here are some of the results:

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I decided my old sig was too big.

One thing to note - it's possible that as the western king populations went different directions from a common ancestor, that there were frequent periods due to climate change when they had heavy gene flow with each other and then that gene flow retracted etc. - I don't think subspecies are necessarily as simple as a fork in the bigger species family tree. Maybe more like a weave.
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I decided my old sig was too big.

>>One thing to note - it's possible that as the western king populations went different directions from a common ancestor, that there were frequent periods due to climate change when they had heavy gene flow with each other and then that gene flow retracted etc. - I don't think subspecies are necessarily as simple as a fork in the bigger species family tree. Maybe more like a weave.
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>>I decided my old sig was too big.

Thanks for the photo. That animal does look somewhat like a yumensis but without the snout pattern of one. It also looks somewhat like a chain king. Perhaps mtDNA can shed light on how the species originated and how the various yumensis populations are derived.

I would LOVE to see some grad student do his doctoral thesis on the genetics of western getula.

I'm not a scientists - I have plenty of BS but no B.S.

However - it's a free country, so I'll speculate.

I think that when such a study is done, L g nigrita will be invalidated and be demonstrated to be a dark/melanistic phase of splendida. Cal Kings will remain a separate subspecies.

The Baja cal kings will be demonstrated to be relic intergrade zone between MBK (melanistic splendida) and Cal King.

My suspicion is that historically, shortly after crawling of Noah's ark and making their way to the new world that Baja California was populated by MBKs. As the climate/geography underwent changes, they got cut off from the rest of the MBK population but had Cal King gene flow come in from up north, and still have that gene flow, which is why the intergrades resemble Cal Kings.

I may be way off the mark - but I would love to see the study done.
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I decided my old sig was too big.

This is an older pic of the male. The banding is actually more of a cream yellow than the picture shows. Of note is that some of the clutch resembled regular fairly wide banded cals, with no tail stripe.

>>This is an older pic of the male. The banding is actually more of a cream yellow than the picture shows. Of note is that some of the clutch resembled regular fairly wide banded cals, with no tail stripe.
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That is sweeeet! Yumas have always been one of my favorite kings. Just not many of them being produced or worked with.

Brandon
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www.brandonosbornereptiles.com

Coool! Jeff