Puget Sound garter gestation length?

[count dewclaw]

I have heard that Pugets have larger young at birth. Does that also mean that they have a longer gestation period for the babies to grow larger (given that temps are similar for gestation of other garter species)?

[bkhuff1s]

Seems that nobody has a clear understanding of this species...

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

I would say no, because while they have larger babies, they only have a few of them, unlike easterns and plains garters who often (but not always) tend to have small babies, but a HUGE number of them. So whether they are having a few big babies, or a ton of little ones, it is still going to take about the same amount of time to incubate those eggs inside the mother snake, there are just fewer of them because space is limited when the babies are larger. A healthy gravid mother is still going to be filled up volume-wise about the same (proportionately to her body size) whether she has 40 little ones or 12 big ones. Whether the eggs are large or small, they still take the same amount of time to develop, because how they form is on a time schedule, and not based on their size as much as good temperature and overall health of the embryo. In a way that you can look at a chart and knowing how old the human fetus is, what the development of the baby looks like at that given moment, you could do a similar thing with snakes if you had the progression chart handy. It's kind of like... say you have a clutch of ball python eggs. One egg is partially deformed and is half the size of the rest, but it's still fertile. That egg will still grow and develop at the same rate as the larger eggs next to it. The baby will still hatch at the same time as the bigger ones, not before, or after them. The baby will be much smaller, but will have developed on the same schedule as the larger ones.

How long it will take for the development of the babies is more closely related to what kinds of temperatures the mother is able to access during gravidity, and not the size of the babies. If the incubation temps are on the low side, the eggs will develope a little slower than ones that have access to better temperatures. Hope this helps!

[count dewclaw]

Thanks Shannon, yes that helps.