Reptile & Amphibian Forums

MIX-MEX. How do you feel about them?

Do you like them? Why?

Do you dislike them? Why?

Do you keep them? If so, let's see pictures. Tell us about them, what they're crossed with, and so forth.

DV

I actually like some of the Mexicana crosses. I remember these being referred to as Mix-a-cana as well as Mix-Mex.
I think there are overlapped regions of intergration in the wilds of Mexico too.
Have most of you noticed that in the southern range of the Mex-Mex around the Jalpan area the Mexmex have a "milksnake" look to them?
I think there is influence from Ruthveni in that particular area.

I have never been there herping, but I know that you, Dan have been across the border on occasion to study Mexicana...what do you think about natural crosses existing and intergrade zones??

I am anticipating the release of the Bryson paper that includes the finding of a possible new species found east of Mazatlan. Could this possibly be a natural cross or intergrade??

I think that if one was to make a cross (not hybrid IMHO) it would have to be with a thayeri just to satisfy variability and curiousity.

I, personally own one Mexmex X Thayeri female. She was not produced by me. I also have two "possible" greeri crosses that we have discussed on this forum months back.

I don't think anything is wrong with crossing within the subspecies as long as the breeder correctly represents his/her snakes and does not try to "fool" anyone to make a buck.
Also, one must not let pure, wild lines get tainted with unpure blood.
This is my take on the topic.....What is everyone elses view??
I will post a pic of my Thayeri X Mexmex soon....

Here is a picture of my possible greeri cross. The pic is a few months old and he has begun to get more peach in coloration. The problem is this: He was sold to me as pure Greeri, but looks too different and is turning peach, characteristic of Thayeri. Even if this was a cross I would not know what to label them as, except..."possible greeri crosses."

John Lassiter

This is a female mexmex X thayeri.

She even looks like what I imagined a mexmex X thayeri would look like. She shows traits of each parent.

John Lassiter

...did the male look like this???
:Mark

...like this dark one???
:Mark

They sure did Mark....I remembered which two you bred to make this one....The only thing she did not inherit was the father's yellow or washed out saddles. That male is awesome Mark.
Thanks for the great little cross. I need another cross to breed her to though. I may breed her to a milksnake phase thayeri to see what it produces, purely for curiosity reasons.....LOL
John Lassiter

Oh yeah...The yellow one you have is a female....My mistake.
She is very nice Mark.
Good luck this year with all your projects man...
John Lassiter

In that pic the male is the darker of the two and actually is the father of the female he is pictured with as well.
:Mark

I remember NOW......LOL
Thanks Mark. Are they breeding again this year...the thayeri father to daughter?
John Lassiter

...they've been together off and on for a while now...
:Mark

Mexicana and alterna have discrete, allopatric ranges. There is no solid evidence yet to support the existence of intergrades in the wild.

We may see Mexicana elevated to species level, e.g., L. mexicana greeri go back to L. greeri.

I've examined Rob Bryson's "new Mexican kingsnake" first-hand down at UANL. I won't say much about it since Rob has not yet published his paper. I will say it's pretty cool.

DV

I really like the fact that Mexicana are not up to species level and are separated just yet. I also think that Alterna and Ruthveni should have remained in the Mexicana subspecies. I guess I am old school. I know their taxonomy is different from one another.

I hope more herping trips from the likes of Bryson, Hansen, Kardon and others bring about new information and/or species. I sure wish I were able to take a trip across the border and find wild mexicana.
Wouldn't it be awesome to run across a Mexmex or Thayeri in the wild, not to mention a Ruthveni and/or Greeri.....Must be a RUSH!

I think, hypothetically, there may be some intergration going on between Mexmex and Ruthveni and possibly Ruthveni and Arcifera to the west. Who knows? Time will tell.
John Lassiter

Alterna and ruthveni does not belong with mexicana. Garstka was right to separate them. Look at the head (eyes) of alterna, ventral scale counts are higher, the hemipenial spines are different too.....it's quite different from a thayeri, greeri, and mex-mex. DV

I agree they are different taxonomically......
Soon all we will have is many different species....Oh well.
John Lassiter

So Dan....When you headed down south to find some of those new Bryson snakes? Or should we call them Brysoni....LOL
I can't wait for the paper to be published...It better have some pictures too....LOL
John Lassiter

I have photos of it......but cannot share. It's Rob's deal.

DV

Yeah...I know You told me that before. Wish I coulda seen them.
I hope some pictures are made public when the publication is released.
John

This post is timely for me.. Heres more reply than you could want.

I've been thinking about the nice robust mex-mex and ruthveni I used to have way back when I was just entering the hobby.

I acquired CB babies from a few local folks. I wasn't aware yet of the myriad ssp of snakes being produced.

Turns out I had ruthveni stock that could be traced back in part to Lloyd Lemke I believe. Mine were huge, with yellowish bands. I also had mex-mex from Robert Applegate. Out of half a dozen mex-mex, one very dark female and 2 males grew up to be monsters. They were unrelated to the smaller ones, which were also lighter in color.

Those mex-mex were super easy to care for and would eat full grown mice with no problem and hardly a bulge. The large female was a sight to behold. Dark but huge.

Like alot of folks, I was drawn to every new colubrid being produced, thinking the ones I didn't have were somehow better than the ones I did have. In the process I traded the ruthveni and mex-mex. Looking back I was wrong to do so.

I've been finding new homes for my milksnakes one by one. I still keep my rosy boas but fewer and just one locality now to make it easier on me and to refine that one locality if that is even possible with such a variable locale. And I am on the prowl again for quality ruthveni and mex-mex.

I like mex-mex because they EAT, they are calm, they can get a nice size, and they are interesting to me right along with the other Mexican kingsnake complex species. They aren't real pretty compared to all those amazing thayeri of yours Dan, but I still like them just the same.
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Mark G

Whitewater rosies, normals and albinos
A few milks, kings and a pituophis
On the lookout for nice robust ruthveni and mex-mex again.

I love mexmex too. I have about 20 of them now....LOL
I am in the process of getting all of the so called morphs or phases.
I have dark phase, splitband, classic phase and brown phase. I am looking to get some speckleds and some dark splitbands this year.

I think Dan was asking about Mix mex not mexmex....
Anyway,
Here is the pair I bred this year. She is huge now with eggs and is beginning to go opaque....
This is the splitband male and the dark phase female....
John Lassiter

While we are on the subject here is a new male I acquired from Crimsonking (Mark K.) this year.
I like the orange neck and peach cheeks.....
John Lassiter

You're right, he did say MIX-MEX. Oh well, like I said, I've had mex-mex in my mind recently, and I jumped on this post thinking that. Thanks for posting the pics and info.
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Mark G

Whitewater rosies, normals and albinos
A few milks, kings and a pituophis
On the lookout for nice robust ruthveni and mex-mex again.

Ditto for me Mark, I used to have some Lemke thayeri and mex mex which I regret selling off. At the time I had no knowledge that hybrids even existed or knew anything about locality specifics. At the time I would not have even known what to look for but I did visit Lloyd's house and saw many of his mexicana complex snakes. It was not until later when I began to see hybrids and crosses for sale that I learned Lloyd had probably personally collected or bought from people who personally collected much of his stock.
I actually have one of the ruthveni that Lloyd collected, it is a large male that was given to me about 4 years ago. The first year I had him I bred him to an albino ruthveni and got 5 fertile eggs which hatched. I later sold the albinos I had and all the babies but I kept the male. Last year I paired him up with a female that was given to me and she is a cb snake from adults which were collected prior to the albinos. Unfortunately last year they produced all infertile eggs and this year he has shown no intrest in breeding even though the female is showing all the signs like wagging her tail when I pick her up so I don't know it may be the end of the line soon for him. He's got to be about 25 years old now. I am hoping he is just taking a rest this year and can produce at least one good clutch for me.
Hopefully some of the guys who were lucky enough to go down there back in the days when the borders were open can share some pictures of the snakes they found someday.

Here's one I produced back in 2002 by accident. Anyone want to take a guess what it is? Its a funny story how the "accident" happened. This is the only one I have access to. I sold the rest of them to a pet store. They sold them as Candy kings. I know at least two people inquired as to what kind of cross they were.

Do I like them? I'll just say I have no desire to buy any or produce any more of them. But I would'nt say I dislike them either. I have seen some that are absolutely spectacular.

Ruthveni X Alterna
or Thayeri X Alterna ?????

I had some ruthveni X alterna possible het for albino I got rid of this year produced by Don Soderberg.

As much as I like Thayeri and their beauty as pure snakes I still want to satisfy my curiosity some day by possibly producing some of those Pastel kings or candy colored clown kings. I may never produce any, but I AM curious.....LOL
Pro-Breeders has the best looking Pastel king I have ever seen....Tony D. on the kingsnake classifieds was selling a pair of albino Thayeri X Ruthveni that almost looked like pure Thayeri....they are beautiful, but when they look almost pure it kinda scares me. When the first pure albino thayeri is made people sure are going to doubt it.....

John Lassiter
Here is the male alterna X ruthveni I used to have....

They do look frighteningly like pure thayeri.
A pure thayeri albino has already been produced. It was fetured in the "What's New?" column of Captive Breeding magazine several years ago. It was a leonis phase with pretty dull coloration shown next to it's normally colored milksnake phase sibling. There was little info given about the adults that produced it as I recall just that they were a normal pair not known to be hets. This was either right before or right after the albino ruthveni came out. I can't remember exactly when but I have the issue somewhere. I have heard nothing about them since so I would assume the project never got off the ground.

I would say there's alterna in it, I don't know what else though. Maybe ruthven's or thayeri?

a milksnake phase thayeri (male) and a blairs phase alterna (female). My female alterna layed 9 good eggs. Only 2 looked like this one. Most of the rest looked suprisingly like mex-mex although you could tell they were not mex-mex. None of them looked narrow band (leonis). None looked like thayeri at all, but you could tell there was some thayeri influence. I did breed her a couple of days later with the male alterna that I had intended to breed her with in the first place. But I did'nt see much alterna in most of the neonates.

It is amazing how the Thayeri variability traits pass on and take over in crosses. Mostly all the crosses done with thayeri look more thayeri-like in my opinion...
John Lassiter

Many hybrids and crosses are very attractive and I wouldn't say people should not do it but I am completely unisterested in owning any. I like knowing about the natural habits and habitats of wild animals and hybrids just don't have that attachment to nature for me.

You said in words what I've been feeling more recently. The one major thing that crosses lack is a tie to natural history, a certain type of habitat, etc. And the natural history of the species I keep has become a very interesting subject for me.
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Mark G

Whitewater rosies, normals and albinos
A few milks, kings and a pituophis
On the lookout for nice robust ruthveni and mex-mex again.

These comments are not really related to Dan's initial post here about hybrids, but were prompted by some subsequent posts.

1. Firstly, as Dan stated, there is NO evidence that the ranges of alterna and thayeri meet or overlap--and by extension, there is no evidence of recent or ongoing gene exchange. These two forms are diagnosable on the basis of distinctive morphology and genetic differences. This means that in the absence of new evidence to the contrary, alterna and thayeri do not belong to the same species--period. DNA evidence that would alter this view could include a finding that "thayeri" is not a cohesive genetic entity--in other words--northern thayeri are more closely related to alterna than they are to thayeri in the southern part of the range.

2. The question then arises as to whether there is a connection between thayeri and mexicana (= mex mex) to the south. Currently, there is a region between the ranges of each from which no snakes have been collected. And of course, there are numerous differences between thayeri and mex mex--pronounced pattern polymorphism in thayeri, sexual dichromatism in mex mex (the males are lighter colored relative to females), and so on.

3. Ruthveni is quite distinctive relative to the other forms and there seems little doubt that this is a distinct species, as Gartska demonstrated in his 1982 paper. Again, there is zero evidence that ruthveni hybridizes with any other kingsnake in the wild--it might be happening somewhere, but we haven't found it yet. The range of ruthveni meets or overlaps those of several different forms of triangulum, as well as mex mex, without evidence of hybridization.

4. Greeri was originally described as a distinct species (L. greeri), and only later was relegated to just another form of L. mexicana. Most people with field or breeding experience with greeri would agree that these do not appear to be closely related to other members of the mexicana complex.

One other observation. Relying on color and pattern to discern relationships can be tricky. Although there are some species that display consistent features of color or pattern that make them easy to identify, there are plenty of other examples where seemingly unrelated animals can look remarkably alike; this can occur because of common ancestry (both lineages retain the genes responsible for that certain look) or pattern convergence because of selection pressure (e.g., the tri-colored coral snake pattern so common among New World colubrids).

In summary then, It's probably easier--given the available biological evidence--to make a case that these are all distinct species, rather than try to tie some of them together under the umbrella of Lampropeltis mexicana. Moreover, recent mtDNA evidence suggests a closer relationship for some of these with central Mexican "triangulum" (which in itself is an unnatural group that undoubtedly comprises a number of perfectly good species). There are studies underway by various workers that will attempt to sort things out. Stay tuned!

Regards,

Bob Hansen

Wow, great posts!
All this just adds to my fascination and intrigue of these beautiful kingsnake species. I'll leave it up to the scientists to do the classifications and in the meantime enjoy these incredible and well behaved kings in my care. I can't wait for the literature or possible big book explaining it all in the future.
Can these species be more interesting or exciting?
Uncloudy

Thanks Rob! I couldn't have said it better myself. HA! I was wondering when a herpetologist was going to discover this forum and chime in.......I'm assuming you're a herpetologist since you are editor of Herp Review.

DV

Great post Bob.
Like I said....I guess I am just "old school"
I know there are differences. I think it is due to the fact that most of these kingsnakes in Mexico are montane to a point and are secluded from other species or subspecies.
I hope some evidence will be found soon to clear up these problematic species or specie.
Keep us/me informed Bob....
John Lassiter