Localities: What does it mean for you? Lucas and I were discussing something on another post about a claimed locality that sits right in the middle of a large integration zone of sayi and affinis. Too me, this seems ridiculous because of the variability thats guaranteed in the population. This is the motivation behind this post. Id like to survey this group to see what a locality means to you. One of the most locality obsessed groups that I can think of is the alterna people. They have it down to the mile marker lol. The reason I can understand this devotion is because of the habits of the snakes themselves. They are secretive and reside deep down in rocky cracks in the Earth. Its extremely easy for a population to become isolated and evolve different characteristics than that of a population only a few miles down the rd. the black gap alternas look a lot different than the east Sandersons or River rds. To transfer this to pits we can look at melanoleucus. The NJ population is isolated from all others and because of this they have evolved unique characteristics that other populations dont have. Namely the high contrast black and white that everyone loves. This to me is a reason to assign a locality. It signifies that a majority of pines in this region will look a certain way that other regions wont. Theres another reason to assign a locality and as an example Ill use kingsville red bulls. None of the wild bulls Ive found in the kingsville area are anywhere close to the red bulls breeders are producing today. They resulted from intense line breeding for high red animals. In my opinion this is not a locality. Its simple a name that stuck and is now being applied to the color. Youll be hard pressed to come to kingsville and find an animal that looks anything at all like the vibrant reds we see offered today. So why call them kingsville? Even on a genetic level the animals produced today have been line bred for decades and I would be shocked to find that they still retain genetic similarities with the wild population in kingsville. The recessive morphs I can understand somewhat. Saying its a Miami co Axanthic distinguishes it from an Omaha but this really has nothing to do with the locality of the animal. It only helps identify the allele responsible for the mutation. The exact same thing happens with the white sides except the original breeders name is used instead of the location. Another reason that Ive seen localities used is to identify genetic lines back to original wild animals that cannot legally be collected again. The majority of the time the original breeders name is used for this scenario though. Vandeventer la pines for example. When I hear a locality used I assume that I would be able to go to that area and find a majority of the animals sharing that appearance. If they dont, whats the point? What are people trying to preserve? Also, there seems to be no geographical standard for a locality. Stillwater is a city, NJ is a state, and Brewster co. is an enormous county that might as well be a state yet all are used as locales for pits. Can I say I have a Midwestern United States locale sayi? How dumb would that be? Lol and I bet if somehow I did manage to get that name to stick, somebody would be all upset if a person bred another bull to my locale bulls. To summarize my position, if a locality is used it should signify something unique about the population in that region. If it does then I can completely understand the purists position in wanting to preserve the line. If the majority of the animals in the local population do not share a unique identifier then claiming it is pointless imo. The Brewster co. locality is what triggered this because IMO finding a unique snake in a known integration zone and line breeding it to replicate its appearance while the wild population looks nothing like that animal is misleading and just a person putting some flair on an animal to charge a few bucks more. What does locality mean to you?
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 14:08:59 +0000
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