Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Yes, I have seen black specimens produce red-throat offspring in captivity, though I am certain the adults producing such offspring have incurred the gene to produce such somewhere along their captive lineage, as many folks have paired predominantly black specimens with red-throat specimens over the years, so you can never be completely certain what long term captive lines will produce, as it is almost impossible to trace the complete history of such specimens.
Your field observations coincide with what I found while living in Homestead and again later, while conducting field work during grad school. I once believed the red throat trait could be demonstrative of locale, but later dismissed such due to the findings of some biologists working in the field in southeast Georgia…

Best regards,

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

Justin,

I have bred Red Faced Eastern Indigos to Red Faced Eastern Indigos and produced:

Year #1) All BLACK offspring
Year #3) All BAD EGGS
Year #4) 12 All black Easterns and one red faced female
Year #6) 3 red faced males and 5 black females

I have also bred Red Faced Eastern Indigo(male) to an all black unrelated E.Indigo female and produced:
Year #1) Bad Eggs
Year #2) Five Redfaced Easterns and 6 White chinned Indigos and one all black eastern (solid black)
Year #4) Five all black Easterns, 6 infertile eggs
Year #6) Black easterns with white chins: 8 Red Faced Easterns: 4

In al honesty Justin, I PREFER to breed black to red. My main concern is TRYING to breed Couperi that arent knowingly related to each other, regardless if I would come out with more red faced Indigos if I did. I do however think that Nazzas Eastern Indigos are spectacular and eye catching, I am not sure if they are in any way related. My advice is to breed from diffrent stock and try to keep the parents as unrelated as possible.

Sincerely,

Fredrick Albury

Fred Thank you

You know, as much time as I spent in the field, while in Florida, I never found a live scarlet king. Though I found a DOR scarlet king, directly in from of my house once! I spoke to Bill Love to this regard, several years ago, and he informed me that I may have been looking in the wrong places, as I was flipping tin, debris and searching rotting logs. Bill mentioned the best place to find scarlet kings was within dead palm tree fronds at the tops of the trees! Since then, I have not incurred the time or opportunity to investigate this..

Best regards,

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

I still find allot if scarlet kings but I have never found a king in a cabbage palm but have heard of others that have. I find all mine (10 a year maybe)in old dusty, well rotted pine tree stumps, near or in wetlands, in the wintertime, on the coldest days in january and febuary,especially after lots of rain. or sometimes on canal banks in clewiston...this is the key to finding scarletkings!

So what local is the one in the pic?

np

We have bred black to red phase and every time, the clutch was split with equal amounts of red phase and black phase. One year we had red phase females hatch out and black phase males in the same clutch. The following year it was reversed. Kinda odd, dont know if it means anything but it blew our minds

seems safe to assume the breeders that produce mixes were not found together and crossed before you obtained them concedering the redthroat is only found in three or four counties in fla and the orlando indigos are usally all black like darth vader or the paint job on a porsche...JB

As I personally recall encountering D. couperi, harboring red anterior coloration, in greater then four counties in Florida and I have been made aware of such specimens being encountered in Southeast Georgia.
Off the top of my head, I recall locating D. couperi harboring red anterior coloration in Broward Co., Collier Co., Dade Co., Hendry Co. and Lee Co., but I will review my old notes over the weekend, as I know I am leaving a few places out...

Regards,

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

Remember in my first statment I had said I was only fimilier with the counties south of gainsville and west of s.r 27 witch divides the state in two (floridas backbone) so I'm not sure what indigos look like in dade co. I do know that the red trait is in all the southern indigos but the red is different on each side of the lake and even more different in the tip of the state like in flamingo, their like really dark red and you can't really see the black lashes around the labials and eye, they kinda look spray painted compared to the ones found in highlands co. and south from highlands co. on the east side of the lake. JB