Monterey Ring-necked Snake (Diadophis punctatus vandenburgii)

Created: May 14th, 2007 - 06:55 PM
Last Modified: December 10th, 2011 - 08:06 PM Entered by: Andreas Kettenburg
Record 3208

Country: United States		State: California	County: Ventura County	Time: 2006-07-14 17:00:00
Qty: 1	Age: Adult	Sex: --	Method: Visual encounter	Habitat: -----
Body Temperature: -----		Air Temperature: 84.00F	Ground Temperature: -----	Humidity: -----
Sky Conditions: Clear		Moon Phase: -----	Elevation: 900.00ft	Barometric Pressure: -----

Notes

This animal was found out crawling.

Vouchers

Comments

Posted by Andreas Kettenburg on Nov 22, 2009 at 11:29 PM

I added another pic of the same animal. I'm going to keep it vandenburghii for now. I'm not convinced it is modestus.

Posted by Paul O'Connor on Nov 22, 2009 at 10:57 PM

An intergrade would tend to show morphologcial characteristics of both subspecies. My only point was that on this specimen there is no ventral color that I can see on the lower dorsal scale rows, so I would call it pure modestus. I ran into a similar problem trying to decide if I had a Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis or T. s. fitchi. I went with infernalis based on the preponderance of the characteristics. For all I know, it's an intergrade, too. I think that's what's good about this database - the more data we can collect and show vouchers for will give us all a better idea of what occurs where and may better define zones of intergradation, or other things - like there are no subspecies but just zones of clinal variation. A molecular biologist reading this would likely be shaking his head. I had to re-read Stebbins's explanation of subspecies in his field guide for solace.

Posted by Andreas Kettenburg on Nov 22, 2009 at 08:12 PM

Would be nice if someone could tell me exactly where modestus stops and vandenburghii begins, especially for specimens found in Ventura County.

Posted by Andreas Kettenburg on Nov 22, 2009 at 08:01 PM

This one was found in Thousand Oaks, the other in Camarillo. Pretty sure it isn't similis, modestus maybe. Intergrade?

Posted by Paul O'Connor on Nov 22, 2009 at 07:29 PM

The photo vouchers for the two D. p. vandenburghii records you have posted appear to be either D. p. modestus or D. p. similis, based upon the amount of ventral spotting and lack of ventral color on the bottom 1 1/2 to 2 rows of dorsal scale rows. Am I missing something?