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Small gopher found on the road in California. Exact site was south of Mojave, off of the 138. I labeled it as a Pacific gopher but I understand we have both Pacifics and Great Basins, and intergrades. Let me know if I misidentified this glorious specimen.

Because of the pattern and the locality I think, it is an San Diego gopher snake - an annectens (color and the amount of blotches) with some influence of deserticola (gray wasch in groundcolour and a "nearly" closed stripe on the side of the neck).

The subspecies catenifer (the pacific gopher snake) lives more northern in direction to the coast and (most of them) have fewer blotches. A little more to the south and west the subspecies affinis lives, but of this I can't see any influence.

Bernd
www.pinesnake.de

Actually, I live pretty far north and we are well out of range of the San Diego gopher. I do know that we have catenifers out here, along with deserticola. I just have a little trouble telling them apart.

.

I visit that area often (western end of Antelope Valley, part of Mojave/Great Basin Desert). The side blotches in the neck area are completely seperate from the big blotches on top, and those top blotches are connected.
On the Annectens, the side blotches connect with the top ones forming a checkerboard pattern. I've see Annectens in Malibu hills and similar habitats with medium temps but I'm pretty sure their range stops well short of full-blown desert.
We go 4-wheeling/camping/trap shooting north of Ave D/170th St West and a few other places.

We take 170th from Lancaster road to D all the time. We found a nice long nosed snake on that road. The gopher was on Lancaster road. We found another a few nights ago (roadkill though) that was quite large. It was on Lancaster road/Ave I near 110th street west.

Hi Dana K, Hi Metalpest,

in the habit you can see some more differences between colourforms and morphs. You are the experts outside. I accept and agree!!!!!!!!!

But those animals of this intergrade zone are not realy typical for the pure subspecies...
Some nice pictures of this ssp. are on http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/p.c.deserticola.html
and
http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/p.c.annectens.html
f.e.
But your written diffences in patternform there I can't see. I think that they are only local colormorphs.

Bernd

www.pinesnake.de

Hey B.
Looking at those pictures, I'd have to agree with you that my description of the blotches doesn't work!
The annectens I've seen in the wild are different, with the blotches all running together. (overall dark, "muddy" snakes, not as pretty as the pictures on californiaherps).
I also agree that deserticola are variable across their huge range. Seems like the "cleanest" patterns get in the photos & breeders tanks...