Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had the pleasure to meet Phil Frank at the Daytona Expo last weekend. While we were talking about Drys, Phil mentioned that he had come across some beautiful rubidus in Mexico including some specimens that had some gorgeous red coloration. This kind of confused me because the few rubidus that I've seen in photos have looked like dark texas indigos with white under the chin instead of the cream or salmon coloration of erebennus.
Phil sent me some photos and Wow!
Phil gave me permission to post the photos here for you guys to enjoy but I'm only able to post one of them for some reason. I can't seem to seperate the others from his email.
This is the specimen that has the gorgeous red coloration underneath but you can't really see it in this photo. What is unusual (atleast it is to me) is that the snake appears to have a white chin like most rubidus I've seen but then the ventral surface turns a beautiful orange/red color from the neck back.

Here's the locality info Phil provided with this photo.
"The red one is from off of Why 37 , 30 mi. South of Nueva Italia, near the Tepalcatepec River, Michoacan, Mexico. It was swimming in an irrigation ditch that was approx. 5 feet wide and two feet deep. That ran through some woodlands.

I hope I can figure out how to post the other photos. Hopefully some of you guys enjoy seeing wild Drys as much as I do.
Chris

Photo taken by:
Phil Frank
Field Associate
California Academy of Sciences

Ok, heres a different specimen. This one doesn't have the red coloration. The locality info Phil provide for this one is:
"The yellow one is from why 54 next to Lake Sayula south of Zacoalco, Jalisco, Mexico. Elevation, 5000 ft. I collected it under a mattress on the side of a roadway very near water. Collected in June of 2003"

Photo taken by:
Phil Frank
Field Associate
California Academy of Sciences

Chris - very, very cool, thanks for posting those - I've actually been to that part of Michoacan, I should have been looking too. I'm still trying to figure out how to post my field photos from central america on the forums...
Craig

I'd love to see those pics Craig. You can upload them from your hard drive to Kingsnake's photo gallery and that allows you to choose what photos you want every time you make a post.
Chris

I found this one south of Puerto Vallarta and it was really red. The picture doesn't show it, but it was red-bellied almost its whole length -

The other rubidus I have seen from further north were just white-chinned grayish-black snakes.

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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, TX

That's a gorgeous snake Chris! I never realized rubidus could be so colorful. The rubidus in Phil's photo (that I've been unable to post) looks similar except it's chin is white but the coloration under the neck is more of a cream and then the rest of the body is that nice red coloration like your specimen.

Just curious, have you ever been able to make out the red hue in the tail that gives rubidus their common name? I've heard that it can be seen when the snake is out in natural sunlight.

I've always thought the name rubidus didn't fit these guys at all but now I stand corrected. Almost makes me wonder if those really red Texans that we were questioning the purity of below could really be rubidus from this locality.
Chris

It's too bad the rubidus photographed was DOA, but it's still a great photo, as are all the photos you have posted on this forum, and I greatly appreciate you sharing them.
I have noticed a high degree of variability among rubidus specimens in the wild, while very few in captive collections are demonstrative of such. I am guessing that most specimens collected for export came from a single locale, as I am aware of only a few specimens brought into the U.S. harboring the degree of red found in the one Chris photographed and those, I believe, came in through Terry V. and Chuck E., while I have heard that Chuck E. once acquired one with a true red tail.
I have a pair of yet another variety, the mottled rubidus, which are quite unique and very attractive specimens that I am hoping, will successfully reproduce this fall.
As for the common naming convention of Mexican red-tail Indigos, I prefer the other common name used among those within the zoological entity; Mexican West coast Indigo, as I feel this is a more accurate description.
Some of the European breeders working with rubidus have informed me that you can acquire offspring with a great deal of red coloration from a pair of adults harboring little to no red and some of the offspring one of my rubidus pairs produced this year have nice red coloration, though I expect it to fade with age.
As for posterior red coloration, there is a red hue visible in the light on the posterior dorsal scales, while the posterior ventral scales tend to be burgundy / red
Craig, it's good to see you home from Guatemala and I hope your trip was productive, let me know how it went…

Best regards,

Jeff
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Jeff Snodgres
University of Arkansas
snodgresjeffreys@uams.edu
501.603.1947

Hey Jeff,
Any pics of the mottled rubidus? Do you get the impression that it is some type of pattern abberancy or just a characteristic of rubidus from a particular locale?

I still wish we could get a few of those bright orange melanurus from the Yucatan peninsula like the one in Dr. Julian Lee's book or the one my friend Pierson found a couple years ago.

Chris

Hello Chris,

I will post a photo of the mottled rubidus this weekend and post it.
There are several genus which display phenotypic differences within different localities, I believe Lampropeltis spp. demonstrate this quite well, especially here in the U.S. and I believe such can be attributed, in part, to range fragmentation and integration with other sub-species of a genus, such as teh integration between D. m melanurus and unicolor. The variation seen among D. m rubidus is what has led me to believe there is some integration between D. m erebennus and D. m rubidus, with some D. m melanurus tosseed in at the Southern most extent of their range, though I am merely speculating.
One thing I know for certain, opportunities abound for anyone with teh resources and willingness to undertake field studies and surveys in Mexico and Central America...

Best regards,

Jeff
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Jeff Snodgres
University of Arkansas
snodgresjeffreys@uams.edu
501.603.1947

The variation seen among D. m rubidus is what has led me to believe there is some integration between D. m erebennus and D. m rubidus, with some D. m melanurus tosseed in at the Southern most extent of their range, though I am merely speculating

I've seen a few cribos (mostly DOR unfortunately) from the areas in question and I don't think there is much (if any) contact between erebennus and rubidus. If there is, I don't know where it would be?

At the southern edge of its range, erebennus runs into the questionable orizabensis (I posted a pic of one here a while back). I don't know what happens in the middle of the isthmus, but I doubt erebennus gets across to the rubidus side. I have seen (and posted pics here) of a cribo from the coast of Chiapas that wasn't at all "erebennus-like" (whatever that means!).

Having never looked at a range map, I suspect that the mountains surrounding the city of Veracruz block the distribution of erebennus further south than central Veracruz. On the other side of the mts, I found an orizabensis DOR just a few miles southwest of the city of Veracruz. It was basically a steely gray animal with a white chin. Somewhere as you move west along the southern Gulf Coast, you hit melanurus coming around from the Yucatan platform (I have found them north of the city of Villahermosa, Tabasco). I don't know what the snakes would look like in the intervening 200 miles, but I guess that gives me an excuse to go herping in the lowlands of southern Veracruz!

Also, I used to expect that erebennus would get lighter and lighter as you moved south until it looked similar to melanurus. The few erebennus I have seen in southern Tamaulipas have been as dark as any TX Indigo I have seen all the way to the head.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, TX

The D. m melanurus you mentioned, from the Yucatan Peninsula are certainly specimens to behold, though I believe some folks consider them another variant of D. m rubidus...

Jeff
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Jeff Snodgres
University of Arkansas
snodgresjeffreys@uams.edu
501.603.1947

"The D. m melanurus you mentioned, from the Yucatan Peninsula are certainly specimens to behold, though I believe some folks consider them another variant of D. m rubidus..."

Really? I didn't think that they were found anywhere near rubidus range but I could definitely be confused.
Dr. Julian Lee and I corresponded a couple years ago regarding the locality of that gorgeous burgandy colored cribo pictured in "Amphibians and Reptiles of the Maya World."
He described the locality as:
"The specimen of Drymarchon in question came from central Quintana Roo, 65.6 km NNE of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, on highway 307."

My friend Pierson Hill found that orange cribo (in the melanurus photo gallery on indigosnakes.com) somewhere on the Yucatan peninsula. Rubidus aren't found that far east are they?

By the way, are you aware if there are any scalation differences between rubidus and erebennus like there are between erebennus and couperi?

Hey Dean...if you're reading this could you post that Drymarchon range map you were working on a few years ago. I get confused when it comes to some of the cribo ranges and good info is difficult to find.
Thanks,
Chris

yes, I'd love to see any current range map ideas too - the only map I have to work with is from the 1941 Smith paper (J. Washington Acad Sciences 31:466), which I suspect is a bit inaccurate....

Thanks for posting!

Think we cold get permission to post the pics on indigosnakes.com?

Phil gave me permission to have them posted there so I'll send Doug some higher resolution photos.
Chris

Very dramatic differences between the "classic" rubidus with the white chin and belly. The "speckled" phase, as I've heard it called, looks so much like TX it's hard to tell the difference. I think 'Ol Herper bought a pair of TXN's 2 years ago and posted pics. I called him on it immediately because of the white mixed in, which TX don't have and bingo, he's producing rubs!!
IMO, rubs are the least attractive of all the Dry's and are as schizophrenic as YT's in temperment!!!!!
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Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas

I could be a bit biased, as I have adult 4.4 rubidus, along with another 6.4 my group produced this year.
I have a pair of mottled rubidus and, to me, there is very little resemblance of erebennus, as the mottled rubidus harbor what can only be described as a milky white sheen with a slight speckling of white and gold. I am still trying to take a photo representative of this to post on the forum, though I may have to hire a professional to do so, as my photography skills are lacking.
As for temperament, I have only one specimen which I would describe as a bit "sheepish" while the rest, babies included, are puppy tame and not nearly as squirrelly as some corais tend to be. It is difficult to “generalize” behavior, as it differentiates from specimen to specimen more so than species to species.
Of course, as I mentioned earlier, I could be a bit biased! ;0)

Best regards,

Jeff
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Jeff Snodgres
University of Arkansas
snodgresjeffreys@uams.edu
501.603.1947

The two specimens I collected in Mexico were from two differen't States and had two differen't attitudes.
The yellow bellied one was calm, as seen by my wife, who is not a snake person and was holding the animal as I photographed it. It did not seem any more agressive than the Easterns and Texans I have examined in the wild as far as aggresivness.
The red bellied animal was much more agressive and was a very poor subject for photographing and would strike and bite as my son held it for it's photo op. It was very hard to collect and was fast and tried to bite and musked immensely. Not as bad as a YT though.
As far as the Drys I have seen from Belize, they are very much in every way melanurus as far as the pattern goes, just with an over wash of red pigmnet.

Jeff, I respect your opinion of course. I only had 2 of the specs/mottled..Still think they look remarkably like TX, except for the eye make up!
I agree you'll need a pro photo guy! The "redtail" is only visible (to my tired old eyes), in high sunlight. More a mahagony color if that. The speckled ones have even less tail color don't you think?
The white on the throat is the only way I can tell the difference. TXN's just don't have much, if any..
E-mail me sometime with animal updates!!!
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Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas