Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This guy is one of my favorite graybands I own. Enjoy!

Billy

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Genesis 1:1

I have heard people distinguish between blairs and alterna in multiple ways. Most people, even experienced ones, say that the ones with wide red bands are blairs and the ones lacking red or having very thin red bands are alterna, but I think this is a misinterpretation of literature. I may be wrong, but the way I read it, it seemed pretty cut and dry. The ammount of red in the bands actually has no bearing on whether it is alterna or blairi. You can find blairs with no red, and alterna with lots of red. What matters is whether the pattern is alternating or not. For example:

THICK BLACK BAND-thin black band-THICK BLACK BAND-thin black band
A snake having the alternating pattern above would be the alterna phase,whereas...
thin black-thin black-thin black-thin black- Would be blairs.

The snake you pictured would be alterna for the first half of the snake, and blairs where the pattern stops alternating. Either way it's a good looking snake. I like the red spot between the first and second bands. Thanks for posting it.

Just thought of that looking at the picture. Do copperheads inhabit any of the grayband range?

pictigaster inhabits their range and I think laticinctus (spelling?) exists in the eastern part of the range. I personally do not believe in mimicry necessarily, but can see where you think it resembles a contortrix species. If mimicry exists with alterna, however, I think they would be more likely to mimic lepidus than any contortrix. I think it's more that certain petterns and coloration form better camoflauge in certain areas, and therefore both species have them, but not because one is a mimic of the other. Take the milk and coral snakes for example. The combination of colors blends to form a murky, confusing brown, which aids the terrestrial snakes in not being detected.