To be honest, I really dont know what we will find. I suspect we can document the rather obvious differences in animals from Borneo and the animals from Sumatra. I dont have a clue how Bankas, Sarawaks and "Malaysians" will fit in. "Blacks" seem to look suspiciously like Borneos when they are young. Dave Barker also noted a yellow animal that tends to originate from north central Sumatra. The issue is clouded by "farms", hobbyist/breeders and people who just want to add an air of exclusivity to their animals by giving them locale names. I talked to an importer the other day and asked him the origin of his animals. He said they came from farms, but he was pretty sure the P generation was not just local animals. He may know more than he is telling. At this point I am just out kicking tires - just to see what I can see. Any real meaningful data will probably have to come from field research. That is on my list of pipe dreams.
Hobbyists seem to commonly associate animals with a certain color pattern to locales. Taxonimist and knowledgable hobbyist also use scalation, head shape, dentition etc etc. At this point I would simply like to collect similar morphology data, but in the future I would like to genotype some locale animals (if I can trust the origin)to see if there is a distinct pattern. I also have locale specific kingsnakes and they have been fairly well examined from a morphological and genetic perspective. As any logical person might predict it isnt very cut and dried. The problem lies with our ideas of "species", locale and what constitutes enough "difference". In the Galapagos, Darwin found some easy pickins'. Nearly everywhere else animals do not exist within well defined locales and certainly animals on the boundaries interbreed creating intergrade animals. Animals also tend to have a irritating habit of packing up and moving to find better digs. Obviously, even animals within a well defined and geographically isolated area also show slight morphological differences. Of course, any inheritable morphological difference correlates to a genetic differences. Just how much difference is enough to catagorize one animal differently from another? I am not a taxonimist,a phylogeographer or an evolutionary biologist. My wife operates a genetics lab at a local university and I ran a similar lab for several years before turning to teaching. We are hobbyist who just happen to be science geeks. We both find these things completely fascinating, and hopefully helpful to the species and to the hobby.
So, to finally answer your question. I would love to see some close-up head shots that show scalation, some body shots, some tail shots and pictures of anything that specifically seems to define your animals as one of the crowd or as a unique animal.
At the very least I might be able to put together a photoalbum for hobbyist to use as a reference.
Wwwhhheew-I thought I'd never shut up
Take care all
Steve
