This is in response to a post I had down the line a bit. I wanted to bring it to light because it's something that I think is important and is surely to cause some discontent, but that's life.
Tony D's response to my first post:
Not sure I follow your last. As far as keeping a particular line "clean" I can see the relavance of keeping other lines OUT but as for it being bred into other generic lines, what's the big deal? Making the attempt to control what others do seems to me a wasted effort. If locality is "the thing" for you wouldn't it be better to focus on preserving your stock's purity? It's not as if that isn't hard enough. Its gotten to the point I wont call an animal locality unless I or a very close friend or associate caught the founder stock.
And my response to Tony:
I'm not sure I follow what you're saying to be honest. It's the geographic isolation represented in the genetic makeup of these snakes that should be preserved - that was my point. If someone is crossing OBK with south GA kings then that's wrong as far as I'm concerned - what's the likelihood of that happening in the wild, where these snakes we call OBK have devloped? It's just basic population genetics, really.
Hell, as far as locality, I insist upon it - there are so many yahoos out there crossing this and that that I what if I decide to breed one of theirs?! Who knows what's in their genetic makeup! These snakes had these unique intergradations, etc. long before people started mucking around with their breeding...that should be the concern of anyone interested in kings and their geographic differences. Without these natural occurrences of we wouldn't even be talking about OBK or AK kings, or others for that matter, but just slight differences in the Eastern Kingsnake.
Most arguments for crossing races, intergradations, etc. is merely a rationalization of someone's own desires, and is not based on any concepts of conservation biology. And I don't share your "just give up" attitude concerning what others do - that's no way help conserve anything in nature.
To each their own, however. Breeding for funky mutations that produce odd looking snakes has never been my cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with it in my eyes. But when someone starts crossing closely related species that are not likely to cross - because of geography - and then sells the offspring to others, they better damm well tell the buyer the lineage; that's just plain ethics.
Remember that the AK was once thought (and not that long ago) to be a cross between L.g.g and L.g.floridana. Well, that's not the case it turns out. SO who knows what snake lines are out there that represent what we now know was not the case as far as their origins?
As such, I refuse to breed any snake that I can't trace to two wc parents of snakes that would likely breed in nature (although I have bought such snakes in the past, I admit). But that's the biologist in me. As far as controlling what others do...you can never do that, but you can insist on knowing what the hell you're getting when you buy it, IMO.
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Peace.
-John
plain bull... to me!)which can only lead to MORE misrepresentation of locale animals! 