What subspecies are my Snakes?

[Didymus20X6]

Snake-Mah-Belleh.jpg

[katach]

I think that pic would work well for this months photo contest theme.

[Didymus20X6]

Heck, yes!

Post the original pic in the Thamnophis May Photo Contest, please! And I'll post my caption in the Captions thread!

Here: http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/tham...o-contest.html

[Light of Dae]

They're both wild caught. Anders was caught in Steinbach Manitoba and Cuddles near Kenora Ontario. Hope that helps!

HA I grew up in Steinbach! We had a whole family of Garters living under our trailer! Used to catch a bunch in the wooded area just beside the trailer park as well, Some by the creek beside Abe's Hill too!

I'd say Anders is an Eastern Garter and Cuddles is probably a Red-sided or even maybe a Plains garter (Radix)... There is not to many Radixes in mb though...

[chris-uk]

Given where these two were caught, I'd say that they are both most likely T. sirtarlis parietalis.

[EasternGirl]

I will then of course have to argue that one of them is an eastern...lol. Alrighty then peeps...what we need is a scale count. Snakesincoconuts...any chance you could get us some close up photos of the sides of the snakes' faces so that we can do a supralabial scale count? We need to do a count of the scales around the sides of the snakes mouth. Also some more close up pics of the entire body of Cuddles would help to determine the subspecies. Are there no T.s.sirtalis in that area you guys?

[ConcinusMan]

Alrighty then peeps...what we need is a scale count.

That won't help. All sirtalis subspecies have the same scale counts, and there are 13 subspecies I believe. Scale counts only help distinguish species, not subspecies.

[EasternGirl]

Right...I know...but someone mentioned radix. If it has a supralabial scale count of 8 as opposed to 7...then we know it isn't an eastern or a red-sided...that it is a radix. And if we get some more full body pics...we could look at the other scale rows and see if we could make some kind of determination of subspecies based on lateral scales.

[chris-uk]

Manitoba is almost entirely parietalis, Kenora is possibly in an area with intergradation between parietalis and T. sirtalis sirtalis... That makes things a bit more difficult for Cuddles. There are radix up there, but she looks more parietalis to me.

[EasternGirl]

Well...if we could get a supralabial scale count...we could definitely say radix if there are 8 supralabials. Unfortunately, if there are 7, from what I understand...radixes can have 7...and all T.sirtalis species have 7...so that doesn't help us in narrowing it down at all then. But, we could look at the face and head and get a better idea of subspecies just by the pattern and coloring on it. And perhaps some more full body pics will give us some additional views of Cuddles that would help us decide if he looks more like parietalis or sirtalis sirtalis.