Reptile & Amphibian Forums

does anyone know the history of these snakes...i plan to buy them, but i want to be sure they are pure

John is a stand up guy, whatever he tells you will be legit. I bet those sell fast. Tom Stevens

Like Tom said in the above post,John at Suncoast is an outstanding guy. No worries when making a purchase from him. I'm sure he'll give you the history of those pines if it's known.

Steve

does anyone know the history of these snakes...i plan to buy them, but i want to be sure they are pure

You have no worries about buying from John Schmidt and I know those are pure LA pines.

Take care!

Billy
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Genesis 1:1

>>does anyone know the history of these snakes...i plan to buy them, but i want to be sure they are pure

Find out what bloodline they come from and use that as a start. Vandeventer, etc. are "good" lines. Some of the other ones (like the Trumbower line) are NOT good ones.

KJ

I'm pretty sure they are from Ginters stock , which would be the really deal .

Jason

>>I'm pretty sure they are from Ginters stock , which would be the really deal .
>>
>>Jason

Ginter currently has Vandeventer stock via Richter. Real deal. His OLD stock that he got rid of when he found out the truth, was the hybrid Rapides stock similar in looks to the Trumbower/Souther Reptiles stock. There are pure Rapides stock out there, though, but they seem to be disappearing FAST from inbreeding depression.

Most captive La Pines trace their heritage back to Terry Vandeventer and Don Young, who collected a few back in the late '80s from Bienville Parish. Others originated from stock from the Memphis Zoo, where Steve Reichling began a captive breeding program around the same time (some of his animals were collected by Terry V). There are some Rapides Parish specimens out there, but very few. More recently other wild caught stock has been obtained by folks like Mike Monlezun, Louis Porras, Theron Magers, and KJ Lodrigue.

With all do respect to the gentleman at Suncoast, do your own homework. John Ginter is one of the most respected pit guys around, but a few years back he found out he was breeding and selling bogus La Pines (most likely N Pines X Kankakee Bull hybrids) which he obtained from someone he trusted; unfortunately he only found out after one of his animals was featured in Reptiles Magazine and he started getting phone calls and emails. Craig Trumbower, another well known pit guy, was similarly taken in. Jim Kane got so disgusted with the confusion over what were legitimate P ruthveni he got rid of his breeders (which were the real deal) to focus on other projects.

Do yourself a favor, read up on P ruthveni, track down some of the guys who've been doing this a while and do the best you can to verify the legitimacy of your potential acquisition.

Something to remember about ruthveni is that they are VERY closely related to bullsnakes - in fact some populations in the wild are more closely related to sayi as they are to other species of pines, and (pardoxically) may even be closer genetically to bulls than to other populations of ruthveni. Which only complicates the problem of identifying pure lineages even more.

where is literature on this species...where would be the best place to start a search??

A few suggestions:

A good starter publication would be "Snakes of Texas" by Alan Tennant (Gulf Publishing); has a good article on La Pines together with a nice picture. If you want something a little more academic the UT Press recently published a big volume on Snakes of Texas which contains a good write up.

Terry Vandeventer presented a paper on La Pines to the Chicago Herp Society many years ago; previously the society would sell copies of the papers for a reasonable price ($10-$15) I haven't been in touch with Terry in a while but he used to have a web site called Arco Iris Herps; I am not sure if he still works with La Pines or not. I would reach out to him to see what he might be willing to share.

Lastly, KJ Lodrigue has kept quite a few P Ruthveni and did a pretty comprehensive write up on them at The Pituophis Page here at kingsnake.com, together with a gallery with a lot of pictures of his specimens.

for scientific papers on ruthveni, google pdfs of papers by Steve Reichling, especially '95 in J. of Herpetology, 29: 186-198. Very well done analysis and discussion of ruthveni as a species.

Check out: 721 Rodríguez-Robles, Javier A. amd José M. De Jesús-Escobar Molecular systematics of new world gopher, bull, and pinesnakes (Pituophis: Colubridae), a transcontinental species complex Molecular phylogenetics and evolution, vol. 14, no. 1, January, pp.35-50, 2000.