In Breeding

[twgrosmick]

I'd say that they are CB -the snakes would have mated and the babies are born in captivity. A more interesting scenario is whether the off-spring of a WC female are WC or CB if the babies are born in captivity.

Breeders can differentiate between captive born (CB) and captive bred and born (CBB). The difference is obviously that the adults were bred in captivity. The fact that they were off-spring of a WC or CB adult really doesn't matter. Hope this clears things up

[SilasBannook]

Can of worms time for the sake of debate, of course.

Well ... there's a point of debate even prior to the introduction of infernalis into the captive tetrataenia genepool.

Do we see them as a distinct sub-species or a locality specific morph in isolation from the infernalis genepool? After all, they have been de-classified and re-classified and debated about as they stand in the wild.

Another issue is that we have also seen 'pure' infernalis produce offspring with the tetrataenia phenotype. So are both lines polluted? or is this proof of a morph?

Gregmonsta,
I found your comment about having seen 'pure' infernalis produce tetrataenia-like offspring surprising. As I have two infernalis garters I plan to breed I was interested and concerned in knowing if that could happen to my snakes (being in the US having an endangered species at home wouldn't be ideal). Anyway, I looked for other reports backing that statement and only found that in the 2005 Endangered Species report for the San Francisco Garter Snake it was believed that integration of infernalis and tetrataenia wasn't very likely as the integrade zones studied had remained healthy and distinct for numerous years (http://www.fws.gov/cno/es/San Franci...view.FINAL.pdf).
Could you help me find a report or two of infernalis producing tetrataenia babies?

I did find one report of an infernalis having a tetraenia baby but the mother was mated with a tetraenia in captivity (Alan's Garter Snakes - My Collection). Would be interested in seeing reporting of tetraenia babies from a mating of two infernalis snakes.

Thanks.

[chris-uk]

Greg said that he'd heard of infernalis pairs producing offspring with a tetrataenia phenotype. That doesn't mean that the offspring were tetrataenia, it means that they displayed some physical traits that would be more typical of tetrataenia. I
suspect that the reports he referred to are not published but are either forum discussions amongst European breeders or simply conversations between breeders.
I'd be surprised if it didn't swing both ways with infernalis/tetrataenia, for example my male tetrataenia has red spots on his tail rather than the stripe continuing all the way to the tip, if you just looked at the tail you may think he was an infernalis.

If you're concerned that you may produce infernalis that look like tetrataenia, my advice would be to document the breeding and birth with notes and photos.

[gregmonsta]

Here's one of our members reporting an infernalis born with the tetrataenia phenotype - http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/gene...nfernalis.html

But we can see this level of variation in other species too. For example: concinnus have shown the capability to resemble infernalis, pickeringi and fitchi phenotypes in parts of their range.

[SilasBannook]

Thanks. That is very interesting. As for being concerned, I am not really worried but was more dubious. I will definitely document my snakes breeding and the produced litter. Since it comes from Scott Felzer's line and no one seems to have reported something along that line I doubt that would happen to any of my snakes. Gotta love the great documentation on this forum relative to Reptileparadise having a litter of infernalis where one did appear to be a Tetrataenia. I hadn't come across that thread. Thanks for pointing it out.