Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Follow this link:
http://www.eastcoastcolubrids.com/Main/Kingsnakes/GA/GA_Eastern_Index.htm

The other two are opaque. There are three shots of one of the females at the link.

- Peter
Link

those are awsome peter im curious as to what your take on the red/orange thats indicative to the ga & fla populations of L.g.g.? its my opinion that its remnants of l.g.fl.influence i dont beleive true l.g.g(e.coast) to have the orange/red pigment in them naturally as you only see it in the nat. intergrade zones esp. from Ga. animals as well as fla. i crossed a s.c to a n.c last year and the babies had veryvery faint hints of orange that dispersed to cream within the year so it does happen though those also could be fla.genes popping up in s.c from generations back, anyway ive never seen the orange/red in any true e,coast l.gg like md.n.c.va.nj , i guess my question is do you think true Lgg are even in Ga.?or are all those along the intergrade zones just that intergrade l.gg's,,,,,thomas

heres a nc to a sc (unknown counties)cb'03 what hints of orange there were were completely gone within 4 sheds

Thomas, I do not know... but it is interesting how (at least on Will's animals) the number of bands are reduced and there is so much orange.

HOWEVER, if you check Keith's website there are more pages of GA animals than any others - and none of the adults seem to display the orange color and there are a lot with very high band counts.

Maybe it is possible that Kings in general get more Orange as you go south... to scare off predators???

I just do not know...

Thanks,
Peter

Hey Thomas

I had some orange and red in a few of my baby NJ Easterns this year but not last year ? I had some Floridana babies that had of orange on them this year and a few had none at all. I guess my point is that red or orange in a Eastern doesnt automatically mean it has Floridana influence. Here is a pic of a Washington DC locale King (f1) juvenile that has a nice orange ring around its neck and some orange on the sides of its chains to. Yeah this will fade in about a year but its a northern locale animal. The pic was taken by John White.

Keith

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yeah it could be a neonate natural defense/camoflage technic as well,(because most fade to cream//yellow as adults) i just dont beleive the true e.coast l.g.g. to have orange/red in their color scheme, but i sure could be wrong
great discussion ,,,,,thomas

I consider all the eastcoast animals to be variations on the same theme L.g.g. Going west I have little to no knowledge on which to base a decision. However, I also tend to be a "lumper" when it comes to plants.

Bob Bull

well thats it im a lumper to i guess but i beleive (1)l.g.g. is valid(&to include l.g.nigra),,,,(2)l.g.fla. is valid(imho this includes,goini,apalachicola,brooksi),,,(3)l.g.holbrooki is valid, but imho would incl. splendida,&,nigritus,,(4)l.g.californeai, incl. yumensis,baja,nitida,,,but lets go further than that in that i beleive l.g.g. is the mother or first from all descending ssp. of getula from from east to west others beleive they started in the west and moved east,,again its just my opinion,,,,,
thomas

Hi Guys,

It's my opinion that the orange is a natural, although minimal in most cases, component to the pigment of L. g. getula. I have seen specimens from nearly every captive locale of l.g.g known and most of those lineages have had at least some orange as babies. I don't think that the GA snakes are any different except that many populations have a bit more orange pigment than most other locales. If you look at my adult F1s posted on Keith's site, you will see that they had light, scattered amounts of orange in adulthood. They were the orangest two of the clutch of Kevin E.'s Tift x Echols Co.s breeding. I raised them up and selected their offspring with the most red/orange color. I then raised up those babies and bred them together to produce the orange babies that Peter and others have now. I see it as simple selection. I have bred for this coloration for a couple of generations and it is now a major component of the color sceme.

I don't see how snakes are any different than any othe captive cultured life form. We can un-naturally select the traits that we find desirable, traits that would likely be selected out in the wild. Bright orange color, like albinism, could attract predators and cause this variant to be selected out before it has a chance to be established in the wild. Whereas in captivity, we can select for these flashy colors, and not have the babies picked off by raptors, because they are in the security of a Freedom Breeder (or other) rack.
I don't know, perhaps because I have been watching this color scheme evolve for so long (since '97) that I can see it for what I believe it is, a manifestation of captive breeding. I still see some orange in the F1 NJ kings that I received from Keith last year. They surely have no Fla. influence, yet I believe that if you selected through enough generations (probably at least 10), you could have a fire red and black razor thin chained (how cool) NJ eastern. For better or worse, we make these captive bred snakes what they are. How many generations did it take to make a nearly amelanistic c.b. L. m. greeri through selective breeding, and not through a simple recessive mutation? Not many as I heard, 4 or 5 generations I think? And that was from wild appearing founders.

I think more folks should work with individual lines of their favorite snakes for at least three generations to see how fast things can change in captivity. I know that until I did it, I wouldn't have believed it. I think Frank Retes, the fouder of many of today's captive cal king lines could shed some light on this subject. He inbred these snakes for many generations and in the end had selected for larger, hardier cal kings that preferred mice, not lizards as prey. While he didn't get orange babies, perhaps that is not what he selected for. Every generation in captivity further removes these animals from the wild, while not necesarilly bad, it does nonethelesss change them.

No hostility intended, just a good conversation. Let's keep it going.

Will

Though a lot of people seem to take the concept for granted, I really like the idea of selective breeding. I've got several projects lined up... I started thinking about the whole concept after catching a lot of Florida kings and keeping the brightest ones. I sort of got to wondering how many generations of breeding it would take until they started looking like nice brook's kings. It's just an experiment, but it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I'm also going to try breeding my line of Lake City easterns for yellow interband speckling, and my brooks kings for wider bands and a lower bandcount. To me it makes the hobby a lot more interesting and fun than breeding without any particular aim in mind.

great post and conversation its just my opinion that the orange/red pigment is NOT indicitive to l.g.g., but introduced thru floridana & goini,i do agree in breeding traits in captivity true that in the wild would be diminished, and when i see true easterns va,md.,n.j. that have oranges then i will beleive it is indicative to l.g.g. also imho this could be prooven by taking an inheretly black&white getula say l.g.cali and breed it w/either a goini or floridana, then take those babies and line breed the goini/fla. out and see if any color shows up it may take generations but i beleive the orange would show up and could be bred very orange as you have done w/yr easterns, but then again i beleive there are only 4 true ssp of getula to begin with w/all the others being variants but not true ssp. anyway hope that made sense,,,,,,,thomas