Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Slim pickings so far, but only a couple trips - 2 intergrade Rats (Black x Texas, there's a pic on the Rat Snake forum), 1 Diamondback Water snake (not positive, might have been a Blotched), 1 Rough Green snake, 1 six-lined racerunner, 3-5 ground skinks, TMTC Red-eared Sliders, 1 Slender Glass lizard. No Western Ribbon snakes spotted yet, which is rather unusual.
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MichaelB

Nerodia rhombifer. At 4.5 feet, she's the largest Nerodia I've seen around here.

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MichaelB

That's awesome Michael.
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Tim

Lousy pic, but it's hard to keep these buggers still. This is a WC from October 2003; the one I found yesterday was about the same size (might be the same one! ).

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MichaelB

...that is the nastiest one I've ever encountered. Typical Black/Texas intergrade from this area.

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MichaelB

What are the distinguishing features in the intergrade that set it apart from a pure texas? If I found that snake, at least from the way it looks in the picture, I would write it off as a lindheimerii. Just curious. I have no field experience with any rats other than Texas, so I am hoping to expand my knowledge with this one.
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Andy Maddox
AIM: SurfAndSkimTx04
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Yahoo:surfandskimtx04
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

If you steal in hunger, I will kick you when you try. These stand for me. Name your god and bleed the freak. I'd like to see. How you all would bleed for me.-Alice In Chains

Good question!! I'm going on published range maps (Conant and Collins show lindhemieriis confined to S of the Red River, with intergrades N across most of N and W OK), and the fact that local specimens generally are darker in overall coloration than most of the Texas Rat pics I've seen. Exceptions show up here occasionally in the form of decidedly lighter and more boldly-patterned animals, which I would consider at least much closer to the Texas end of the spectrum. Tanner here is one of those exceptions, but when I first posted this pic last year, I recall someone then saying that even she looked like an intergrade to them.

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MichaelB

I can see how the pattern looks differently on that pic from a normal texas rat, the other pic just had me a bit curious. Very interesting!
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Andy Maddox
AIM: SurfAndSkimTx04
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Yahoo:surfandskimtx04
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

If you steal in hunger, I will kick you when you try. These stand for me. Name your god and bleed the freak. I'd like to see. How you all would bleed for me.-Alice In Chains

It's a topic of some debate. I generally don't see much variance in the pattern itself from one to another; the saddles are similar on all of them. Differences here are limited to coloration. I have a paper somewhere that I picked up a couple years ago on pattern variations in locality obsoletas from the KS and northern OK area. I'll see if I can dig that up.

I have another pic showing both of the obsoletas I found last month, but I can't get the file down to a manageable size. Anyone know any tricks using MS Photo Editor to lower the file size without compromising image quality too much?
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MichaelB

No clue. I have been using adobe and Picture It express.
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Andy Maddox
AIM: SurfAndSkimTx04
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Yahoo:surfandskimtx04
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

If you steal in hunger, I will kick you when you try. These stand for me. Name your god and bleed the freak. I'd like to see. How you all would bleed for me.-Alice In Chains