Its still a big whoops, with such a group, you cannot only include one individual from each of a very few locals. For instance with Thayeri, there may be a tight relationship in certain but not all locals, with triangulum. I.E. intergration zones. But not all locals, I.E. high elevation populations. Not enough animals. Then to use captive animals, hmmmmmmm WRONG. Why do they do this, are they friggin to lazy to gather their own data. Or are they too cheap, no, no, I get it, it would take too much time!
Next,
So before you attempt to figure out the whole we would need to figure out the small parts of this group.
I was part of the field work on Garskas paper and did get to observe much of the preserved material. Even thought I was part of his paper, I did not agree on much of what he had to say.
Next,
Also the assumption of mimicry(mentioned in this paper) is naive and prejudiced. Again, humans are not natural predators so we do not count, mimicry works on us. Their natural predators do not have such a problem. Their predators TAKE corals as well as kings without hesitation.
Its very very clear that the tricolored patterns are very successful with fossorial snakes. It appears to have benefit where snakes live "in" and not "on" our earth. How many surface active species of snakes are tricolored???? So where do you guys think of the patterns of wormsnakes and blindsnakes come from? Do you base your thoughts with those species on what happens on the surface. You can catch both on the surface like tricolors.
Its our mistake that all animals live like us, on the surface of the earth. These tricolors like in and under the surface of the earth. They have huge populations where very few individuals surface for us to find them.
If we were at a herp show bar, I would explain it this way, If sharks were the dominate intelligent species and they collected humans snorkling and kept them in tanks of water. They would soon find the humans could not survive after a while. Yet, without question the sharks did find them in the water, therefore these humans must be aquatic.
Then the sharks related everything they saw with these humans in a shark aquatic way, (Condritpromorpism) Yet the reality is, the vast majority of humans are not in the water and were not developed for the water. But the sharks refuse to look at them as land dwellers, after all, they found them in the water. Those sharks are so boneheaded.
This is true with fossorial snakes. The vast percentage of these kings are underground AT ALL TIMES. With much less then one percent on the surface at any time. So how could surface pressures have any strong influence on what these underground animals do???????? Particularly with color and pattern. Their color and pattern is developed to be of benefit UNDERGROUND, where they LIVE.
Lastly even the effects of surface predation is naive and biased. Most surface predators do not SEE how we see. They use other organs, like smell(and other senses we do not understand). They without question view the world in a much different manner then us. They see the world through a landscape of smells and visions(even infra-red).
Of course, cryptic species could very well be controlled by birds who do hunt with vision. But to think a fossorial species are controlled by visual predators is VERY naive of us and highly anthropromorphic. Mammalian and reptilian predators mostly hunt in the dark, and use smell as a key to locating prey. Hmmmmmmmmmm do snakes mimic their smell as well?
Then the thought of absolute enters the equation. Snakes are combinations of these things, not all one or the other.
Lastly, the use of dna is ok, but its only analyzing small parts, in most cases, very very very small parts. When it comes to the makeup of a whole animals, there are millions and millions of small parts included in each animal.
These parts are a reflection of useage. They reflect what is needed for an animal to exsist in its enviornment. This is also a reflection of BEHAVIOR. Behavior drives usage and therefore the development of parts. Yet, behavior is not part of taxonomy. There is a problem here, as behavior and physical adaption are fused and are indeed one. The problem here is, behavior cannot be found with a knife. You cannot cut an animal open and analyze behavior.
So we are saying that parts tell you about behavior, yet its behavior that drives parts.
The point I am making here is, taxonomy is suppose to give us an understanding of an animal, the whole animal. Again, the WHOLE animal. But instead of looking at the whole animals, we take our understanding from a very powerful microscope. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm we are indeed missing the big picture, THE FRIGGIN WHOLE ANIMAL. We should not take our understanding from a tiny piece of an animal buried in an onion skin of genetic history which contains tens of thousands of other bits we do not use.
I do understand the problem. I guess most people cannot understand what an animal is or does, so they must take their understanding from a very small part of a small part of a small part. Hmmmmmmmmmmm that scares me. Cheers
,,,,,,,thomas davis
