Reptile Fight Club - Can Universal Standards be Applied to Taxonomy?

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle the topic of taxonomy as a process. Should all species have the same process / methodology or does it make sense that different groups apply different metrics and standards? Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

all right welcome to reptile fight club sorry it took me a minute to remember what podcast it's been a little while, but I guess not that long. Welcome to Reptile Fight Club. Here we go for another fight, I suppose. With me, Justin Julander, is Rob Stone. How's it going? It's great. Ahoy, hoy. Yeah. Longer since we've had an episode published than since we've done them. And maybe we get a couple in here in short order to get back on track and all after the trip. So, yeah, all good. Yeah, I saw Eric put one or two up. So the one that we did with them and then the one that we did together. Right. I think I saw those come out. So at least the one we did with them. I don't I don't know about the one that we did together right i think i saw those come out so at least the one we did with them i don't i don't know about the one that we did subsequently i think there was something that got released anyway when is what what is when so here we are now yeah nevertheless yeah so yeah things have been pretty uh crazy since the trip and um just trying to dig myself out of a lot

of work and stuff at home and we're getting ready for my daughter to come home uh from texas so she'll be home on the early december so we're excited to have her back and um she's been gone for a year and a half and And so that'll be fun. But yeah, other than that, it's just business as usual. Snakes seem to be doing well. I've started pairing stuff up and getting stuff going, seeing some locks in the womas and blackheads. And so hopefully we'll have an Aspidites year,

get better than last year. Man, everything just kind of crashed last year. So we'll see what happens. But how about you? You got stuff paired and going for the next season? No, I don't really have anything that, well, I suppose the Solomon Island tree bows may be coming eventually, although they're all kind of, at least those females are in heavy feed mode.

So I'm not sure this will be a year. They kind of, I think we talked about this before, but basically it seems like they have lean years and heavy years where they're willing to feed or not willing to feed. And then in general, coming off of heavy years is the year that they seem likely to produce. So I don't think we're timing into one of those at this point, they're probably heading into a heavy year. So yeah, I'm not, you know, with the stuff I have, I'm not pairing stuff up. Although the Yeah, the point of interest was what not this past weekend, but the weekend before we had power out for 25 hours when it was in the 20s outside or whatever.

So that was, you know, always the the the item of concern and where I'm at, there really isn't, you know, the question is always, Oh, you have a generate, you know, and all this stuff. And it's like, I don't have a place that I could run a generator that it wouldn't be, uh, that it would be secure, you know, like with certainty, you know? Um, so I did get, uh, at my wife's advisement, you know, I wasn't even aware they existed, but they work off the one-pounder propane camping, the sort of camping deals. And they're approved design to be run in indoor conditions. You still need some ventilation, but man, those things definitely work, at least takes the edge off for sure. The funny bit is that with the stuff that I have, all the West Indian boas, you know, the lights.

Now the lights are still off because, you know, the red bulb and all that. And they were all just in hunting position, just like, yeah, it must have been a weird eclipse or something. But, you know. Back at it. Yeah. Back at it again. Yeah, I'm sure wild animals need to deal with these kind of things all the time i mean you know they they pop out of nowhere a lot of you know i think they've got to be adapted to

have sudden drops in temperature i always laugh you know when we lower our temperature by a degree a day over the course of a week or two you you know, for our cooling periods, it's like nature doesn't mess with that. It's just like one day it's a hundred, the next day it's 40, you know, well, at least around here, maybe. Right. I mean, well, that's, yeah, that is the classic Colorado, Utah thing where you go, honestly, it must've been, you know, frontier times ignoring everything else. It must've been a super dangerous place to live in the sense of just how rapidly we can go from beautiful weather to terrible and vice versa. But, you know, just everything looks fine.

And the next thing you know, you got 18 inches of snow. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. I think we've softened as a people, like being out in Australia and having that heat, you know, and just thinking, man. And frankly, I shouldn't have been trying to sleep when I was 90. I should have been out, you know, scanning the rocks for geckos or something instead of trying to sleep, which was, you know, just not productive. But I guess I was tired or something, but I wasn't thinking.

Should have been out shining the rocks. But yeah. So what do you do? But, yeah, I think the times have softened us, you know. Yeah, we just upgraded to new phones and that whole nonsense. And it's just a headache and a half. And half the phones don't work. And, like, we're trying to get them connected to, you know, the whole Apple thing. And, uh,

my daughters are freaking out cause they can't access their Snapchat or whatever they need to get on. And so it's, uh, been a little rough. We've, we've become soft, I think. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, just pretend like you're me when I was your age and I had no phone and there, but there wasn't even phones to add. You don't even, you wouldn't even know like you're me when I was your age and I had no phone. But there wasn't even phones, Dad. You wouldn't even know what you're missing. I'm like, well, we'll survive, I promise you. This is first world problems.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, it's just like back in the 80s and 90s, right? You'd fix a nice supper and then you'd take a Polaroid picture of it and you'd walk around to your neighbors and show it to them. It's just the same. Exactly. That's exactly what we used to do. Yep. Just like the good old days.

Crazy stuff. But, I mean, technology is nice. And, you know, this morning I was remarking to my wife how nice it was to take a hot shower on a cold day, how easy we have it and how comfortable we have it. And when those things go away, we realize it real quick, you know, when there's a power outage. Absolutely. When we moved into our old house, we found out that there were some things that were done incorrectly. You know, the house wasn't up to code. And they turned off our gas because there was

a carbon monoxide issue you know and yeah that just about killed my wife she was gonna go take a nap but then she decided not to or you know the carbon monoxide alarm was going off and uh they called the cops and they said yeah if you would have taken a nap you wouldn't be here today so you know it was that's why and then they shut off our gas until we got it fixed, brought up to code. And we're like, how did this get mixed in the, you know, inspection that we paid for? Why did they not bring this up? And the realtor kept saying, well, welcome to homeownership. We're like, come on. Is there no recourse? Well, there is, but it's very expensive. And we're like, okay, say no more. We're poor.

We get it. No justice for the poor people. So we had to have a couple cold showers. And, yeah, we're pretty soft these days. Anyway, enough of that. Things are good in the herp room. You know, the babies have all started, for the most part, started feeding okay. I've got a couple holdouts, but Antrovesia will do that.

You know, this year was fairly easy as it goes, you know, with the ants. I didn't have the best of luck with the pygmies. I think being gone for a few weeks, that always kind of messes that up because they kind of need, you know, at least once a week assist feeds. And so I lost a couple of those. It was kind of a small clutch anyway, and they were pretty small babies. So, but I have a couple left, but hopefully next year I'll figure it out. That's what I always say. Right? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, what else? Anything else we need to bring up? I think, I don't know. I think I'm just ready to fight. I just have this fight in me. I'm kind of worn out, actually. I started playing water polo, so we had practice today. I don't even know if I can play in the games or anything because I'm not a student. So it's like this 50 year old guy is probably some weird guy coming to play water polo with the college kids. But I don't know. It's been fun. It keeps me in shape

and hopefully keeps the pounds that I lost in Australia off. But so still can, uh, hit that second notch on my belt that I, you know, couldn't hit before the trip. So very good. Yeah. That 135 miles did me some good. I think we just sweated it all off with the heat. Um, so yeah, my, my brain is not, uh, as functional as maybe it could be, but we'll go for this topic anyway. We had a topic suggested by a listener, Mark Heath. He was asking, you know, should there be a fixed set of rules for taxonomy? And so I think, you know, we've kind of hit on taxonomy here and there. I know we had, uh, Phil Wolf and who was it? Was it Casey Cannon or who? I can't remember who Phil fought with about taxonomy, but anyway, yeah,

it might've been Casey, but anyway, um, so we've hit, you know, had a couple of shows on it, but I don't know that we've kind of hit that topic. And, and so I think there's some nuances to taxonomy that maybe is not, that we could benefit from chatting about. And I'm trying to think of a good way to put the topic, but, you know, I guess, you know, pros and cons to, to fix set of rules or a standard in taxonomy maybe would be a good way to state it, but I'm sure we'll branch off of that a bit

and talk about the things. I mean, obviously, we are not taxonomists, and so we're just using kind of our educated, best understanding of taxonomy, and so we might be off on this. We probably ought to find some kind of taxonomy. And so we might be off on this. We probably ought to find some kind of taxonomist to have on at some point. But I mean, I've chatted with actual taxonomists and people who understand this much better than I do, and they seem as frustrated with some of the same things as I am.

So and, you know, talking with Rob before the show, we've got a few bones to pick with taxonomy, I guess. And so I think that's maybe a common frustration with with people out there that, you know, that taxonomy just sometimes drives you crazy because it seems so arbitrary at times. Other times it seems like, well, why would they make that choice? You know, what is this? You look at the rationale and you just don't agree with it. So we'll kind of hit on these topics while we're talking. But thanks, Mark, for the suggestion. We appreciate it. And we appreciate you guys who are listening in and making suggestions and giving us ideas for topics or telling us what you want to hear.

So let's keep those coming in and keep us on the right topic, I guess, so we don't get off on some weird tangent that we want to talk about. All right. So I guess let's go pros and cons maybe to a set rules of taxonomy idea. We'll go ahead and flip a coin. Okay. Tails. It is heads.

Heads. Okay. That's just as well. Yeah. I mean, I don't know which one I'm thinking about it, which one I prefer, but I'll go with pro. I'll go with, uh, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll go with bro. I'll go with the taxonomy could use more, a fixed set of rules and, you know, ideals from group to group, but, uh, uh, maybe I'll lead off.

Why not? Okay. Cool. I like to talk, just spout out my nonsense. So I think that's one of the big frustrations, right, with taxonomy that a lot of us have is that it just seems to be arbitrary. It seems to be dependent on which group of reptiles or mammals or whatever is being described. Um, it seems like whoever's doing the research, whoever got the funding kind of calls the shots. They get to choose what model they use. They got to choose which DNA they think is important and, and which regions they're going to look at. And, uh, and I, you know, I guess to some extent, um, there, there are some definite challenges to having a set or fixed set of rules for

this kind of thing. And I think they are kind of moving towards that in some way. But I do think, you know, that it's necessary to have more than just one thing. I mean, I don't think you just get the DNA and say, OK, here's how it shakes out. We're just going to go with DNA. You also have to look at maybe physiology or how they're how they interact with the environment, biogeographic barriers, things like that. And I think all those kind of things are taken into consideration these days. So, you know, I do think there are some kind of overarching

guidelines and rules to taxonomy, maybe not as rigid as we'd like. I think our understanding of what taxonomy is, at least my understanding, is that it's not necessarily a firm science. I think you gather data and you interpret it the best you can. And it is up to the researcher to kind of identify what's important. And I don't know how we get beyond that because the people who are interested in it and who are doing the work or putting forth the effort, you know, why shouldn't they kind of give their best, their best ideas forward? Now, you know, some of the frustrating things are like, you know, are subspecies a thing? You know, seems like a lot of people say, oh, no, there's no such thing as a subspecies. And other people say, no, subspecies are a necessary

thing. I think in the end, as long as we know what we're talking about and we can kind of see, and I think as, I'm all scattered, aren't I? But anyway, I think as herpers, we kind of say, here's what's important to us. This is why we want these to be different because they're different localities or different. So a lot of times it makes it easier if these different localities or these different types have a subspecies or some kind of name. Designation, right? Exactly. Yeah. Scientific designation rather than just our trade names or our trade whatever. I think we like science to agree with what we see. And sometimes I'll say, you know, herpers see these differences before the taxonomists do. You know, I think for the longest time, people, you know, that were into

green tree pythons knew that the southern green trees and the northern green trees of New Guinea were very different. And they could tell, oh, this is a southern or this is a northern. And in fact, they are fairly divergent and different species. And so all these crosses between, you know, Arubiacs and all those kind of things are actually hybrids of two separate and divergent species. So anyway, my rambling, I'll stop it and just kind of say I think there are some general rules as much as can be done. Could there be more? Maybe. It's hard to say. Okay.

Fair enough. Well, as you say, there's a ton there so let me take excuse me take a couple of jumping off points and then we'll just continue down the road the i think um there some of the variability that you've highlighted right at this point is based on the there needs to be some variability amongst different group taxonomy of different groups because of variable rates of change within those groups right so they'll um kind of the their rates of divergence differ across these different organisms so it can happen more quickly or more slowly depending on the sort of underlying genetic

and physiological structure of those animals um in the same way that we've talked about with reptiles in general, particularly those coming from isolated populations seem relatively immune from the effects of inbreeding in a way that isn't the case really with mammals, even in those small isolated pockets over time, right? So there's just sort of, they're not all the same, right? In the same way we've talked about with, you know, why are there all these different goanna species within these different areas? If you can treat them all like, you know, take the frank, they're all goannas,

right? And the answer is, well, obviously they're not all the same or they wouldn't have speciated, they wouldn't be different things if there wasn't a reason for them to be different things. So I do think there's some element of truth to that, right, in terms of fundamentally, or at least fundamentally as a concept, I can accept the different groups speciate at different rates. And so there can be some variance in how we perceive different levels of difference across different groups of organisms over time. And I would kind of understand that as like, you know, say something that reproduces very rapidly, has lots of offspring, lots of chances for, you know, genetic mutations or changes to occur in a shorter amount of time. Yeah.

Yeah. So they might change more rapidly, might be able to adapt more quickly to changing environments or situations over time. And so they might persist, whereas something that takes 75 years to reach reproductive status. The tuataras probably, yeah. Exactly. There's a reason there's only a small isolated area where you can find tuataras in the world because they don't adapt very quickly, potentially. So, yeah, that's, I guess, kind of how I understand it, if that matches with your understanding as well.

Absolutely. So you wouldn't probably express it a little better than I did. Yeah. You might not apply the same rules to a tuatara's evolution as you would to a, you know, insect. Right. At least conceptually. Right. And maybe the answer is that you could apply the sort of same paradigmatic principles, but that when you're actually looking at it saying, okay, a lot of this, at least the way I understand it is based on sort of rates of change over time and how long it's been. The perceived difference between most of this, right, is in the context of drawing distinctions amongst different things. It's less so than talking about a singular animal or type.

It's how different is A from B or A from the tree, right? And where do we wind up and what's most closely related to the next closest item? And trying to make a – I think that's basically it for all of it, right? It's trying to make a, I think that's basically it for all of it, right. It's trying to make a tree that makes sense and where we can wind up with some sort of, um, disfavored naming or losing old names that have, you know, been, um, sort of, we've all grown accustomed to or familiar with or like, um, that could be the result of, oh, well, this was described one year earlier and actually where the, the, to make the tree make sense, then we're going to get rid of this name in deference to this other one or whatever, causing sort of radical shifts. I will say,

just because, you know, it would be, would be crazy to miss it. And I'm staring at the board here with all these colubrid and colubroid banners and all this different stuff that Dr. Zach Loafman is actually a taxonomist principally working in crayfish, right? You know, we hear, we hear him every week talking about, uh, colubrids and colubroids. Um, but, uh, he actually is. And so, you know, I know their podcast, uh, they've gone into the, the Eastern rat snake group. They did a incredible episode talking about kind of the, uh, all the science associated with that. Um, and actually that leads me right to a point that you had

touched upon earlier, but that to me is kind of the fundamental underpinning of my whole understanding of this is that taxonomy really, to me, is one of the softer, hard sciences. So, it is a hard science. I acknowledge that. And as a lawyer, you know, I'm certainly not, you know, sending strays here, right? Because certainly my stuff is as soft as it can be. But fundamentally, I think we need to understand taxonomy not as a binary system, but rather as trying to take our understandings, progress them as far as we can, and then make the most compelling arguments that we can. And it's really not a function of what the author says so much as the, the, um, receptivity of the audience to the persuasiveness of the argument of the author, right? That's really what matters. People

put out papers all the time, right? And some of them are taken up and others are not. Um, there is a system of priority. And I think that's the stuff that Phil, when Phil was on that he was really getting into, right. A sort of deference to the naming conventions and all those things. And that's really not kind of the focus of what we're talking about today. But to me, the key is, you know, whenever over more than a decade of listening to reptile podcasts, if I hear someone say, well, the science says nothing great like that in the context of taxonomy, because in reality, the author of that paper, bringing their own personal biases to the party, is just trying to make a compelling case. And, you know, I can buy or sell that, right? And ideally, when I'm doing that, I'm an informed

consumer. And as you highlighted, as a keeper, particularly if it's something that I have a ton of exposure to, I actually might have more exposure to those as living creatures rather than just sort of DNA samples. Yeah. Yeah. Pickles or DNA samples. Then the people writing that paper, like certainly, you know, that that's absolutely the case in the context of the Ganyasoma paper. Right. That always becomes a topic of consternation.

Right. But that's the classic prototype example for me because of my relationship with that on several different levels that I can look at it and say the paper itself espouses that, well, based on the evidence that we saw, there are multiple different positions or alternatives for how we could lay this out. And a reasonable consumer of this paper could choose to think one of those multiplicity of options is the best, makes the most sense, fits their paradigm and their bias. But we're lumpers and this is what makes sense to us. So this is what we're doing. In the paper itself, if you actually read the paper, it says there are multiple things that could make sense here based on sort of what we bring to the party. We're choosing this option and we're freely owning that. The key point is that to me, when it's then discussed on a podcast or whatever, it's just, oh, this paper in 2010 says it's this.

So it's this. No, that it does. The paper itself doesn't even claim make that claim. They're making an argument. They're hoping to persuade. And ultimately, you know, in scientific naming, two things. The first would be that really it's the uptake by the community. And that mostly means scientific community. We as herb keepers kind of are a little bit more loose with what we'll take or leave. But in general, it means, you know, they're putting an argument into the world, and the question is really how many times is that cited further? How many later works accept the argument that they've made and incorporate it into their own work? That's really what's important. That's the validation.

So yeah, absolutely. That's sort of – fundamentally, I think we just need to get that out there because that's a bugaboo for me personally. Yeah, no, I completely agree because, you know, they're doing the best with what they have. And I think, you know, you see that if you go back 10, 20, 50, 100 years, you're going to see an evolution in the literature. You know, you're going to see the first Python species were all genus Python. You know, they are all Python. So they're all related. They're all in the same genus, you know, and then over time, well, this one's a little different because it does this or they they've been apart from this one for millions and

millions of years. So we'll put them here. And these guys moved in the Pleistocene. So we'll put them here and these guys moved in the Pleistocene. So we'll move them here. So, you know, all these, all these different, um, changes and rearrangements and reassortments and, you know, people had just frankly, um, the wrong ideas where they said, okay, these Aspidites have no pits. And so that must be the original Python form. Those must be the most basal rather than the most derived.

Exactly. And then it turned out to be the opposite. They're the most derived. They're the newest changed pythons on the scene. And so, you know, and DNA and other things have kind of helped us sort those things out. Now, DNA is not a magic bullet. You can't just say, oh, I did the DNA and now we have everything and we know everything about this animal. And I admit that kind of is hard to understand why. But when you think about the millions and millions of base pairs that go into DNA and trying to interpret what all that means. You know, yeah, you can sequence the whole genome of a different animal or species and compare it with that of another. But what's important in that giant, huge mess of a DNA?

And so I think as our technology rapidly changes and evolves, our methodology to analyze that also changes. And frankly, most of the regions, we have no clue what they code for, what they mean, what they do. I think, you know, the genome is still largely a mystery in a lot of things. And for some things like the human genome or mouse genome or things, we have a lot better grasp and understanding on a lot of things there. Some, of course, like proteins and coding areas that code for proteins are probably well known and we can look at that across and it's probably fairly homologous with other, you know, animals or, and so we can make comparisons and things. But I was just, I was, I attended a lecture today on prion disease and prion disease is a misfolded protein that can actually convert other normal proteins that are in our brains into the misfolded type. So it's like an infectious protein disease. It's very weird,

but one difference in an amino, one amino acid change in that sequence of the prion protein results in a different kind, you know, a resilience to that change in certain animals. So like you have, they had to change the mice so they could get human prion disease because their prions were not the exact sequence. So they're very similar. Yeah. And they serve a very similar function, but the sequence is slightly different in those. And so that one change makes them resilient to, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, lots offolds and causes disease. And so, you know, they know a lot about that one protein in that one way, but what does the normal prion do for, you know, there's not a lot of knowledge on even what function it serves in the brain. So, we, you know, of course, there probably is some knowledge on that. I'm over-exaggerating here. But we don't understand a lot about a lot of things.

The more you learn, the more you learn you don't know much. A lot of it's kind of a mystery. So, yeah, we can sequence it, but then how do we get meaningful information from that huge sequence dump? You know, it's yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So and then how do we make that make sense in regards to taxonomy or change? You know, it's not as simple as just saying, oh, I have the DNA sequence. OK, problem solved. Now we've got the DNA sequence. Now we know that is it helpful?

Potentially, you know, there, there may be things we do understand, like, oh, if we look at this, uh, you know, the mitochondrial DNA sequence that can help us understand rapid changes because those are only inherited from the mother. And so you can draw certain conclusions and see certain changes over time. And so there are things that are known that are helpful and we've been relying on those, but new advances come along and we say, oh, now we're looking at this and this is more important. And so that area evolves and changes over time too. So with our ability to get more information, our understanding of that information also changes and evolves. So, you know, the papers of 10 years ago

may look silly to us now because we went, oh, they didn't look at the genetic sequence. Ha ha ha, fools. And in the future, they're going to be looking at back on this time and saying, oh, they thought this, oh, the fools. So it just changes. So, but, you know, back in the day, we can look at these old plates drawn in the 1800s and we can say, oh, that's a diamond python. I recognize that. I know what they're talking about when they describe its behavior or whatever. So granted, some of that may be a little mixed up in history. There's an example in nobtail geckos like an Underwoodosaurus and Neferus. They drew a picture of one, but it was probably the other one that they named. And so that name should have gone to a different gecko. But that's just kind of how how things

shook out and we don't need to go back and fix that because that would just confuse everybody because we know what a an underwood asaurus milli is and what a nephorus levis is and if you switch their names just because it took precedent because this one should have been named that and originally that would just be a big a bigger mess than it would help. So, yeah, again, maybe I'm rambling, but those are some thoughts on DNA as a magic bullet or whatever. of the uh as you say the sort of veneer or illusion of certainty right in the moment this is the best that we can do and we sort of then take that both um retroactively and sort of uh see that the deficiencies in past things right so as you talked about it sort of the evolution of even what would qualify as a viable species description was different 50, 20, 100 versus 50 versus 20 versus 10 versus now.

And then the same way going forward, I don't doubt that they'll be incredibly different, right? It kind of fits into, to some extent, it's important, as you said, to just recognize the element of uncertainty. The thing I think about when you were going off about looking at these DNA strands, right, and you'll know way more about this than I do, but is the ability for, or human DNA containing the DNA of viruses and things, you know, that are just sort of retained into our features and things. And so what does that mean? So theoretically, right, if it's entirely derived down the line, then we could see, OK, maybe here's where it popped in and then you could see descent down the line. But do we even know that with the element of certainty that we think we do? Right. When we're presenting when I would present it in that way, you'd say, well, maybe, you know, or it's the or it's the best we know now.

And so that's what we go with. You know, nobody's going off of the worst information, although sometimes you wonder. I mean, I think even the the concept of a species has changed a lot over time. And now there's several different species concepts that may take precedence in certain circles or certain amongst certain types of types of organisms and things. Yeah. I would venture to guess that most people listening probably have heard the species concept that if two species, you know, if, if they're indeed separate species, they, they will breed and produce sterile offspring. You know, the mules, the classic example between a horse and a donkey and you get a mule and they're sterile. And so that means mules and, or sorry, donkeys and horses are separate species because their offspring are infertile. But that doesn't apply to reptiles at all because you can get all sorts of crazy hybrids

between the most basal and the most advanced and, or evolved and, or recently involved and, and, uh, you can get, uh, you know, fertile get fertile offspring from those breedings. So obviously that species concept is outdated and does not apply to reptiles. Right. For a very simplistic example, and there's all sorts of – I mean, there's species cloud or those kind of concepts where there isn't just a this is this, you know, this is this right now, but it's moving in this direction or it interacts with this different element or species group or whatever. Ring species. There's also concepts out there.

So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think the other thing to hit on, right, and we're not stuck in sort of the vernacular portion of this, but would be to say that at its most basal, right, a lot of taxonomy, scientific nomenclature and things, the intent is to avoid the problem of common names so that at least we can ensure we're talking about the same thing. And to that end, right, even if we're in a space where I'm using the name that was proposed or accepted on date X and you're using the more recent nomenclature, you know, X plus 10 or whatever it would be, the process of that records what the name was previously for that organism. So if we're both sufficiently informed, that can instead reflect sort of what that should reflect is our, um, willingness to accept the argument that was made in the paper that you're referencing, right? You probably previously were using the nomenclature that I'm still using.

And instead it's, you know, we can, that's the conversation we're having, not a fundamental disagreement about what it is that we're even talking about. And that's really kind of the whole point of the whole thing is trying to put labels onto stuff so we can all be talking about the same thing as opposed to just saying, uh, the brown snake, you know, whatever that might mean, you know, that would mean something different to someone in, uh, Florida, right? Maybe they think brown water snake,as pelota versus if you're in australia obviously brown snake there are a many brown snakes and you know even amongst that well which one are you talking about so yeah and and there's some erroneously named brown snakes like a king

brown which is actually a black snake exactly so i i uh i had a fun uh conversation with some uh with chris and aspen uh we were herping and we found a chuckwalla. And I said, oh, man, their scientific name is so fitting, Obesus. And they're like, what are you talking about? It's Sarmalis Adder. And I'm like, Adder? When did that happen? Like, no, it's Obesus.

That stuck in my mind from when I was a kid. And I guess I never revisited Utah Reptile Taxonomy or whatever because I hadn't seen the change to Sarmalis Atter. I had it in my mind that they were still Obesus. And so I was corrected and acknowledged that correction. And now I refer to them as Atter. But I still think Obesus is such a much better name. Yeah. Well, what you need to do is go back to that paper and see if you actually agree with the change. Yeah, there you go.

You can fight Aspen in Australia and say, absolutely not. It should be obesis. I read that paper. That didn't make sense. Exactly. Yeah. I disagree wholeheartedly with their change. And it probably is something like, well, originally they were given this name. And I mean, we find that with the python we were trying to find out in Australia. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I guess the reason I tend to not engage with that conversation quite so much is because some of it then just turns into silliness, right? On the one hand, it could reflect, oh, you know, why are they all Ganyasoma, not Rhynchophis? It's, oh, well, the Ganyasoma name was applied in 1889.

And, you know, Rhynchophis, that was 1893 or 1897, you know, this sort of. And while it's probably not totally accurate, certainly the conception I have of that point in time, that just seems sort of silly, right? In some sense of like, okay, where were these specimens coming from? How were they being published? The whole going back to the sort of dynamics of it. Oh, you need to distribute X number of copies within a day's distance of your location of publication and all the stuff that reflects the fact that this system is born out of the 1700s and sort of what technology looked like and information sharing looked like and all those things. I tend not to, I try not to get wrapped up in that because some of it's then, it's not a question of,

it's solely almost priority and then uptake as opposed to whether it makes sense, you know, sort of how inclusive or exclusive it is of intrinsic meaning right as you highlight you know impelli python's nick defile a python i recognize that that name exists from the what mid to early 80s um but translating to be night living python and that's just absurd because i my my challenge intrinsic challenge there would be okay which distinguishes it from literally every other python how yeah um exactly you know yeah as far as i know right in inappropriate temperature they're all nocturnal so yeah i don't i don't that doesn't make a ton of sense to me help yeah yeah and the warren is not descriptive. Yeah. Such a much cooler name and cultural.

Exactly right. Right. And so, you know, I recognize the need to have a system and that's fine. But that's why I tend to, in some ways, it's not as interesting. Right. I can poke fun at it or whatever, but I try not to get super tied down into that rabbit Warren because it just – it can be very frustrating to say, okay, recognizing the system of priority for hundreds of years, this is the way that it will be. It doesn't necessarily – it's not necessarily based on the overall quality of the description or even the intrinsic meaning and things like that. It's just sort of, well, we just give deference to what came first that was recognized as being legitimate at the time.

Yeah. Well, and to the some of the names, the species were named after those people turned out. Absolutely. Same issue. Nazis or whatever, you know, you're just like, oh, now we got to call it by this, you know, honor this guy who was a horrible person or whatever. This person who had no clue what was going on or, know had no interest in reptiles at all probably um was the the number one murder of snakes in their neighborhood or something but because they were the duke's uh son or daughter they got named a snake after them anyway some of them are some of them are great right you know on

the other hand and then some of them are funny right right? And you'll know that I don't remember the first and middle initial. I want to say like AG or something. But like Children's Python is named for a person whose last name was Children. Yeah. Right? Or Children's. I don't remember. Children.

Yeah. But yeah. So it's like people, whereas now if you take them to a show, I'm sure people will think, oh, this means they're appropriate pets for children. That must be why they called them this. And it's not, right? So, yeah, super interesting and convoluted and invariably, right, as we move forward, almost inexorably, the things of the past will look worse relative to modern conception. That's just sort of the way of progression, you know, progress, progress, progression, whether it be or not. Right. And I think there is a push to to change that system of naming.

So you don't just have everything be hosiery or, you know, it starts to be more descriptive of either the appearance of the animal, the area it comes from, some kind of cultural reference to that animal and its importance in the native people, you know. So I agree with that. I like that type of move. You know, I like a descriptive, you know, stellatus or something, you know, the stars. You can picture the spots on the back being the stars in the sky that kind of thing it's kind of a cool thing or um you know like our noir and you know yeah you know cultural significance i just like that name and you know you we're welcome to use

that name because it is the aboriginal name for the species absolutely you know and we'll know what we're talking about if we say noorin or Noorin, whoever. I don't even know if we're pronouncing it correctly, but they're Americanized version of whatever it's supposed to be. But I think that's kind of a cool thing. Yeah, I guess we won't even touch on pronunciation and how things should be pronounced. We have some fun, we've had some fun discussions in our group of different pronunciations and, um, Willardy

versus Willard. I don't think his name was Willard. I think it was named after a guy named Willard, but anyway, yeah. Keep calling it Willardy if you'd like, Nipper. We won't poke too much fun of you. But yeah, just the idea of, you know, naming, as long as we kind of recognize what they're talking about. If we say Nyctophilopithon or if we say Morelia Owen Palensis, we'll know, you know, yeah, I know what you're talking about. You're using an older name, but that's okay. Maybe Obesis and Adder might be confusing because, you know, Chris and Aspen had never heard of Obesis. That was not familiar to them at all. And they're, what, 10, 15 years younger than me or more.

So they wouldn't have, you know, been a kid looking at the field guides and seeing obesity adder in all the guides they had. So it's understandable and kind of fun. I don't know. I thought Aspen had presented himself as having gone through and was studying, be it old field guides, Wikipedia pages, studying all the previous names so that he could engage in that conversation with you. I thought that was how he presented it, but. Yeah, it could have been. I probably misremembered that. But yeah, it's funner just to say, oh, as you described in terms of sort of for the most part what the naming paradigm looks like now, herpetological highlights has had several episodes where they've really kind of talked about that. And certainly they seems like the view that you espouse really reflects sort of the view they have as well in terms of descriptive or descriptive, be it of the animal itself and its appearance, you know,

have it be helpful in some way. Right. Right. And even Dave and Tracy Barker, you know, in terms of the names that they would suggest were really proponents of that, of trying to promote clarity within both the scientific and particularly for them, the common names of things, right. It should be a lesser sun despite than not a Timor Python. That's sort of, that's sort of an idea. Yeah. Um, the Perthensis, Antaresia Perthensis should probably be Antaresia Pilbaraensis instead. Yeah. They don't come from Perth. They come from the Pilbara.

But yeah, I, I, I mean, there's always going to be, you know, fretting about naming in, in that regard. But yeah, I guess this isn't necessarily this discussion. I think back to the idea of presenting their, you know, putting their best foot forward. I do agree that a lot of papers will put forth several different ideas and they will go, you know, they'll kind of choose the one that they think fits best, like you said. And so, you know, they're going off the best that they've received or the teachings or philosophies of the time. It's really hard to go against the grain and try to introduce a new species concept or a new, you know, nomenclature concept or things like that,

because you really have to make a very, very strong case to do away with what's been done in the past. And so, you know, or other people are doing in the moment. That's the whole thing. Right. And and the other part of that, I think that's a great point. I hate to jump in on you, but no, like they need to acknowledge a paper that's making a well to be taken as a rational argument. It needs to present where there are clear alternatives, right? It's not only – there's actually self-interest in saying, well, I'm choosing A. I recognize that it could be A, B, or C, but I'm choosing A. Otherwise, they'd be exposing themselves.

You know, if the paper just said, it's A, you know, that's it. Don't worry about anything else. Yeah, very vulnerable to being attacked, both, you know, in the peer review process and upon publication in the sense of saying, well, actually, it could be A, B, or C, and you didn't even acknowledge that B or C could exist. So we're going to impute that you didn't even perceive that rather than saying, okay, it was, you recognize it could be a B or C and you chose a, so that's actually, you know, linguistically, it's important for them to present the, you know, present those choices and be honest about then making a choice.

Otherwise it looks like you just didn't even realize that it could be that choice. Right. Yeah. And I think there is there is some sense of, you know, I how to how to put this, you know, when you say things have to be kind know, constitutes an evolutionary trajectory. And, and does, you know, they've, we, we kind of discussed a little bit before the show about, um, you know, the, uh, Australia, New Guinea connection when, you know, the ice age occurs and the, the sea levels lower and the land appears and, oh, now all the, you know, different carpet forms in, in that Lake Carpentaria area. Now that's a lake instead of a Gulf, you know, now they can move around, interact and interbreed and things. Now that happened, you know, several million years ago. Um, what we have now has been isolated for several million years. Um, for example, uh, uh, laboratory mouse breeding center. Okay. How does this fit in? Listen, and let's see if this helps, but, um, they have this, uh,

laboratory, you know, research center that breeds rodents for research, and they have specific strains of mice that they breed and try to they they're actually inbred strains so they breed siblings isolating certain characteristics exactly yeah and so these have been bred for generations inbred for generations and they so say company a will have this line of mouse, we'll call it, you know, strain B and strain B and, and the company gets bigger and bigger and they have more demand for strain B. So they have, oh, now we need to ship to, you know, all around the country. So we're going to have a facility in California and a facility in New York.

So they split strain B and into two and they put, you know, one colony in California, one colony in New York, and they're breeding this strain. You know, they're not introducing any other strains or any other mice. They're just breeding strain B true. And they do this for, you know, five to 10 years. And then they compare strain Bs between these two facilities, and they find 20,000 different changes in the genetic code between the two facilities. Is strain B the same strain B that in California as it is in New York? Not so much anymore. For an example of how this affects in the real world is we have an infection. Forgive me if you don't agree with research and animals, but we have viral models in mice and we infect mice with viruses.

And so sometimes we would get a different outcome and we'd say, OK, we've infected this strain with influenza before. And, you know, it's lethal in some cases, and then in other cases, it's not lethal. Well, we get to digging, and we find out, oh, it's lethal when we infect mice from New York, but it's not lethal if you infect mice from California. And so it changes your whole research. And so kind of the conclusion was don't order mice from, you know, the California facility or whatever. Get them from the New York facility because those are the ones that are whatever their genetic code makes them susceptible to the virus that we're using or whatever.

So, yes, those changes do have an effect. Are they still the same strain? Well, yeah, they're obviously still mice. They're obviously, you know, derived from that same thing. Are these changes enough to say, no, they're not the same strain? Should we call them substrains or, you know, sub substrains? How do we differentiate those two? So we differentiated by facility. Now, could the same be said of, you know, these populations that have been isolated for 5 million years, they're going to change quite a bit between Darwin and Papua New Guinea and, and Cape York. And they're going to

change to match the environment. They're going to be isolated to some extent because there's no carpets in swimming in the ocean because there's no carpets in swimming in the ocean and there's no carpets kind of in that lawn hill area at the base of, you know, the lake or Gulf of Carpentaria. And so there isn't currently any intermixing going on. So they've been isolated for 5 million years. I guarantee there's plenty of different changes that one population has that the others don't, and guarantee there's plenty of different changes that one population has that the others don't, and they're having their own unique changes. But what is enough change to constitute a difference? And what is enough time to say they're on their own

evolutionary trajectory? Because obviously, all the individuals now are not going to be intermixing with the other populations. And so they are on their own personal evolutionary trajectory. Now, as a group, you know, what does that mean? And how long does it take to have sufficient number of changes to say we are different now? We are unique. And when we join back up in five, 10 million years or whatever, are we going to be able to, you know, mix and mingle again and form some new, you know, that I guess that's the maybe the species cloud concept is they're ever changing and ever evolving. And Ben always liked to throw this one.

Ben Morrill used to throw this one in the mix when he'd say, as soon as you take it out of the wild, you are taking it out of it that evolutionary trajectory you're putting it on a new evolutionary trajectory so technically it stops being that species from where you got it from because you're choosing who it breeds to and you're choosing what you know it experiences and so you're changing it in in certain ways to mean that it may not fit in with that species that it originally came from. So, you know, that, that, uh, kind of maybe illustrates the point of how challenging this is to put a label on something that's constantly moving. And so, you know, we do our best. We try to say, okay, this level of change is, is fine. But if you go more than this, then you're this.

It would be nice to have that. I don't think we do have that because I think in maybe certain areas you do that they care about percentage of genetic change or whatever, but I don't know. It's a complicated topic. It's very a complicated thing. And so you do just have to form the best case that you can and say, look, these guys are separated from these guys by this biogeographic barrier that tends to have speciation on either side. So we would say that that probably constitutes their own evolutionary trajectory. Now, maybe they can cross once in a great many years and maybe this one gets in and interbreeds. You know, you've got the case of the diamond pythons and the coastal carpets and, you know, they have an intergrade zone because they're different things and they interbreed and

make a third thing. So, how that, you know, you could use that to say, well, they're the same species because they interbreed and it's fine. Or you can say, well, they interbreed and form a third thing. So they're a different species. This is a hybrid, not a intergrade or whatever. So it becomes complex. Yeah, absolutely. And what is there is not the same thing as if you just tossed a diamond with, you know, northern coastal, right?

It won't look like that same thing. It's just tossed a diamond with, you know, northern coastal, right? It won't look like that same thing. It's not that simple, right? It's so many iterations upon one another. And this is probably self-evident, but right, not all biogeographical boundaries, even in of the same type are the same in the sense, you know, as you were talking about the sort of northern Australian to southern New Guinea, I'm thinking at the same time in that same general area, isn't Biak or Biak, right, is the term continental island, right? So it's just that the gulf there between northern New Guinea and Biak or Biak is – it's super deep water, super deep current, quick currents and all these things. The island of Biak was never a part of New Guinea. Exactly right. Yeah, separated by deep water super deep current you know quick currents and all the island of biak was never a part of new guinea exactly right yeah separated by deep water yeah yeah so which is just super interesting right so it's not the same thing as you know something in the torus straits relative

to either northern australia or southern new guinea um so it yeah just the level of complexity is amazing right and and in terms of if you're talking about speciation on BIAC versus in the Torres Strait, you know, how would you apply that same standard? Or if we're talking about genetic isolation, those inherently will be different. And your argument will be more persuasive if you're talking about speciation, potential speciation of something that seems very similar in northern New Guinea and in BIek than, you know, something in southern New Guinea and the Torres Strait. Yeah. And I mean, you could even, for example, just thinking about kind of the Biak versus the other northern New Guinea, Biak wasn't given a species of green tree, right? Even though there's probably some evidence that they probably should be a different subspecies at least, or whatever you want to call them, because they are fairly isolated and they've been, you know, they've diverged. They've been divergent for

quite a while. And so, you know, there are definitely some scientists that say, no, there should absolutely be a subspecies of green python from Biak. But, you know, the last paper, for whatever reason, or the region that they looked at was not the region of change for that particular isolate or whatever. I think about the pygmy banded pythons with the latest Antaresia paper. They're not even mentioned or included. I think there might be a picture of one in the paper, but they're not involved in the sequencing or the DNA differences. Some of this comes down to sample, right? The samples that are available. Like literally, did they have samples of this form to be included in the paper or not?

Those practical considerations shape this more than, again, going back to the old bugaboo, right? Of, oh, this is, you know, science says. And it's like, no, all of this is occurring within the context in which it takes place right there are practical constraints on all of this and if you ask any herper that knows much about pygmy banded pythons you would say no that's a that's a different species that's not that's not a stimson's not well children's now or the as the argument goes or a spotted they're not neither. And they overlap with both spotted and Stimsoni or Childreni. Frankly, I think those eastern Stimsons probably are Childreni.

But anyway, you know, they're something different. They're smaller. Their head structure is different. Their escalation, you know, their counts, their measurements are different. So why did a paper looking at the genus Antaresia miss that? You know what I mean? And I know they were aware of them because I believe there's a picture in the paper. And I know for a fact that Peter Birch had talked to them about this putative species or whatever, and they just basically ignored it. So who knows, uh, what the, what the reasoning or what, what, how that occurred, but we still don't have any scientific

evaluation of that, you know, uh, putative species or whatever you want to call it. So that's kind of part of it. The thing that jumped to mind, right. As we're having that conversation is like, well, fundamentally, right, it would suggest that they are indeed different. The fact that they occur conspecifically with both those other forms but exist as themselves in that area. that we've seen with California king snags, with Alterna, right, of saying, like, it wasn't until they were born in the same litter, and it's become clear that there are multiple forms within, you know, a given population, and there is some regional variants to prefer, you know, selective pressure to prefer the striped ones versus the banded ones, but in both those contexts, we're talking about things that were described as being distinct distinct and actually, oh, they're just, you know, the multiplicity of forms that are within that same grouping.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously it's a very complex issue. That's why it would have been nice if they would have looked at them genetically or, you know, or measurements or whatever. Yeah. That would have been very useful to have in that paper. So that's... Or hemipenal structure they ever, ever, ever loved. Yeah. Dirty taxonomists always looking at the hemipenes. Although that's so interesting, right? In terms of like the reason that those different structures exist, why that diversity exists. And that actually maybe as a speciating factor is one of those things that was looked at hundreds of years ago and actually maybe should be looked at more in our present

construct, right? As opposed to just deferring to DNA, because that literally we are talking about something where you need the key that fits the lock. So that actually is a limiter. Right. Yeah. That is an interesting point. Oh yeah. If we could standardize this, that would be nice. I mean, obviously, there's some things that preclude the ability to standardize these kind of things or to say. But at the same time, I mean, it would be nice if, for example, there's a new paper, vertebrate zoology from 2024. It's called Vickers in the Desert, Substrate Specialization and Paleo Erosion Underpin Cryptic Speciation. I love the term cryptic speciation. In an Australian arid zone lizard lineage. So basically they're talking about substrate specialization. This is referring to the helmeted gecko, the Diplodactylus galeatus.

And they've found that that actually consists of three different species that have specific preferences for three different substrates. So, you know, fairly not a huge ranging gecko. It's not covering all of Australia. It's kind of southern northern territory northern south australia you know kind of a little circle in there but they've found that there's enough in their minds information to warrant the splitting of that into three different species and this is mcdonald fenner tarcola and oliver paul oliver who peter j m. McDonald, you know, he's done quite a bit of this kind of thing. So, you know, but I do like including that kind of thing of their interaction in the natural

environment. I don't know how you get around that and not have that be included. Now, you know, your point about the California king snakes, I think definitely that could play into this. And you can have the same species have different looks in different areas with different types of soil. But when do they draw the line into saying, I'm only going to live in this type of soil? I'm not going to range on the other soils. And so when do you stop being, you know, a variable species? A singular species with a ton of variation into these hyper specific, right? Anytime we're talking cryptic speciation, that generally means if someone, even an informed consumer, so to speak, were to be looking at the three different species uh species of formerly galliatus right cryptic speciation suggests that they look more or less the same right you need those extra uh those extra the

information on the externalities and how they interact with it for it to be oh okay now now i can see appreciate this difference yeah now there are some um kind of general rules of the differences in pattern to some extent. Like some have, you know, more white spots. Some have, you know, a certain species has more white spots. Some have more portholes along the side rather than, you know, diffuse spots. And then one's kind of intermediate to that. You know, they have this portholes or spots. And so it's just one line of you know that

kind of idea so there are some hints of of differences and you know that was similar to the wheeler eye they were both the nephorus the knobtails uh the banded rough knobtails common names are almost harder than the same you had wheeler eye and synctus and they were both subspecies, but then the paper came out showing sufficient argument to say that these are full species and they should be recognized as such. And so now we've got wheeler eye and synctus. So, um, which is, you know, they see those differences, they see the pattern differences, the, the structural differences, you know, one had a more blunt head or a shallower head or something, you know, and you can show that consistent measurement between the two groups. And then eventually that pans out and with the genetic analysis into, no, this is really something that differentiates the two, because we also see a huge divergence in the genetic code as well. So kind of interesting, you know, but somebody could come along and say, you're crazy.

This is just a, you know, this is a... This is in your imagination. Yeah, exactly. There's just slight differences in their patterning because they're on different soil types. And, you know, you're saying it's because they have to live on those soil types. And, you know, you're saying it's because they have to live on those soil types. And, you know, so there could be an argument the other way. Now, the genetics, they might kind of overlap to some extent. And in some of the morphology, they overlap. But, you know, I guess you could make the case. No, there's, there's definitely some divergence there and, you know, they, they make a reasonable case. Now, maybe if I was a Galeatus keeper and I, you know,

studied them and found them all throughout Australia, their range in Australia, then maybe I'd have a more informed thing, similar to what I have with the Antaresia where I'm like, nah, this is nonsense. You know, there's definitely a difference between Stimsoni and Chilterni, especially the Western Stims. But anyway. Yeah. Well, I mean, so the thing that was jumping to my mind as you're talking through that is our own experience with the Sha'i in the Northern Territory, right? So prior to, and you'll know this history way better than I will, but if you took it, if you go up the chain far enough in terms of sort of the history of the naming conventions of these things, all of the Asper slash Amii animals were Asper, right, until some point in the 80s, late 70s, 80s, something like that, right? that right so amy i as as a distinct entity was recognized at that point the part that was jumping in my mind is that that animal was so much more not having seen an asper in the wild it was certainly reminiscent of all the things that i consider to be asper characteristics rather than

an amy i so the idea that you know when i'm reading the reptiles from 95 you know casey it's got the amy i on the cover and all this stuff the idea that oh if you went to kakadu and found one of these animals would it be an asper you know i think that that article i think everything is asper maybe even frames it doesn't recognize amii possibly but the question would be well which would this be and you know from that perspective it's like no that thing that was an asper type not a not Amy. You know, you haven't interacted with it. There's no confusion that that's an Amy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's always a, you know, and they say, well, you know, this one's in the red center, so it's orange and, you know, this one's up here on the ruckus garment. So it's a little darker, you know?

Yeah. They just kind of, but then when you get more information, you get a better picture of the range or of the variability within the range. And you see, OK, I'm starting to see patterns here. Well, there's this huge gap where you don't find any or nobody's found any. So does that mean they're not there or there are not any roads there? And so you kind of start to build the picture and say, OK, I'm starting to see a pattern here, you know. And then you see, oh, obviously, AMI are very different than ASPR or Shea-Eye. And, you know, there's a huge gap in the distribution above, you know, AMI, between AMI and Shea-Eye and Shea-Eye and AMI and amii and aspirin so then you say oh obviously how could you think these were all

the same species you know because you didn't have the information that we have today the you know all the range and genetic analysis or or you know measurements of the different species and so you know it's a little harder to see from a limited information but you're right when you're looking at old papers you have to kind of look and see in the materials and methods where they were collected from because some of those asper may have been amia and not asper right no that's what and that could cause some of the confusion of saying oh there's all this variability and in reality that's what it's hiding i mean I guess the part that was so visceral for me was just saying kind of the very light, you know, framing around Cher had been, oh, yeah, it's Amy I with the, you know, the toe bands, you know, or whatever. And it's like, then we were looking at this thing and I wouldn't describe it as that at all. That's not correct at all. And that could reflect sort of just the very casual nature of my exposure to it, right? You having written the book, undoubtedly, it was less of a surprise to

you. But, you know, that was just sort of how it had been colloquially framed in the early 2000s. Oh, they're calling this thing different. It's an amii with toe bands no no not even yeah right yeah and i i think too i mean we've we were talking uh in in uh you know on the trip about the um glower dye and how you can find glower dye in kakadu and they're so uh disjunct from any other glower dye populations and how, how is this even a glower dye? You know, they look different, they act different, they climb on trees or, you know, that kind of thing. And then you're thinking, man, has nobody, but obviously somebody's been thinking about it and somebody's been working on this and these things kind of move slow sometimes. And so, you know, having the patience and, and, you know, having the patience and, you know,

there's always whispers, oh, so-and-so is working on this and they're, they're, they'll have a paper out and it's like 10 years later, someone's working on this. They'll have a paper. It's, it's not working diligently. Exactly. Yeah. And then, I mean, it's hard because, you know, the funding's low and nobody's paying people to go out and collect samples or, you know, you might not have enough. Even is it permissible? Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly.

So you're reliant on collections, what they have at the time and, you know, those kind of things. So there's a lot that goes into this and it's a very complex thing. So it's, it's hard to, to judge the taxonomist too harshly, you know, because they're, they're, I do think that they're doing the best they can with the current knowledge that we have. And, and, uh, so, you know, this, this isn't to say you have to agree with everything that comes out, you know, you can have a difference of opinion and, you you can inform yourself uh learn about these concepts and say no i think it probably fits better in this arena and maybe that drums up some you know you can publish your own paper there's nothing against you know citizen science might be best to tag team with an actual scientist that shares your views or you can kind of convert over to your

side i guess but um there's nothing to say you can't do that and and set the record straight in some cases you know just distribute it uh you need to print it and distribute it with a within a certain number of copies within a certain distance of your house and you two are abiding the rules of the 1700s exactly and I guarantee there was somebody out there saying, Amy, this Northern Central Australian Asper is not an Asper. It's an Amy. It's something different. I think we should name it after this explorer's daughter. So yeah, there's always somebody out there seeing these differences and making those. And I think that's an important part of this, too, as we go out and find weird things and find animals that don't fit a certain box, you know, like, oh, this looks like a weird glower dye.

Well, maybe it isn't a glower dye. Maybe it's a weird something else, you know. So that's the idea is keep trying to bring an open mind. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. An open mind, both to the possibility and innovation. Right. And yeah, I mean, that's the part of feeling like I don't have a appropriate expertise in this is just the constant innovation. I know that there's stuff that I'm, you know, I know how much I don't know as you highlighted earlier. Yeah. is i mean it is hard to just kind of jump into the it would take quite a bit to you know get to the point where you're going to be able to know all

the rules and follow the this you know the thought of the day on in regards to taxonomy but have the technology and you know capacity and but these days i mean anybody can hire a lab to sequence a genome you know you can you might even be able to it's it's hard you might not be able to get into some of the collections unless you have credentials and things like that so there are kind of some gatekeeping barriers in academics, which sometimes can be good and sometimes can not be so great. But there are ways to get access. And if you're serious enough and you have good enough concepts, there's a way to do it.

There's probably somebody sympathetic that does have the credentials that can help you out and get you there. So I would say anybody going down that path, keep going, fight, you know, fight the good fight and make your case heard. Because you may have good information that just isn't well known in the scientific community. So I think we assume like, well, if they're a PhD, they should know much more about this than I do. But that's not necessarily always the case. Sometimes that passion of, uh, you know, a hobby or, uh, you know, that we, we just have this desire to know as much as we can. And we're traveling to different countries to see these things in the wild, you know, and we might not see tens or hundreds of

them, but we might see five or six and who knows maybe that observation could help uh but put a you know something in the right direction and in regards to that animal so again i mean the pygmy banded python is a great example of that you know i think uh casey lazik found one back in the late 80s and peter krause had known about them as well back in the 80s. But there were kind of hints and whispers about this weird pygmy Stimpsons, I think they called it. And they started breeding them and had them in captivity. And now they're commonly kept in bread. They're in Europe and even in the U.S. now.

So I just talked to somebody, a friend on Facebook that brought some in from Europe. I'm like, oh, that was easy. You know, I didn't think they'd be able to do it. I thought they weren't letting stuff out of Europe that, you know, originated from Australia. But she got them in. So kudos to her. But, yeah, so there's all sorts of cool things that just out there to be discovered. So I don't know.

I hope that was a reasonable discussion and we didn't. Some interesting points there, whether we kept the threat or not. I don't know. But that's always the hard thing is keeping us on. So hopefully we got to some of the points you wanted us to make Mark, or we, we made a reasonable discussion out of this that you've enjoyed and our other listeners as well. But yeah, that's I guess where we'll leave it for tonight. And maybe if you have some other thoughts on the topic, we can get, you know, keep this up at another time. But I think for tonight, my brain is not

functioning well enough to go further. Well, any cool things out there that you've seen in herpetoculture or herpetology in general? I guess the thing that's really jumped out at me is just the incredible content of wild herbs on instagram right all these different accounts that i wasn't aware of you know that i just stumbled onto one somebody who uh local in south vietnam is operating tours to both south and north vietnam and as you can imagine you know as i'm flicking through the uh the different pictures the thing that jumps out has oh i see that's a phrenotum have you seen rhinos and they're on there twice so i'm gonna assume that he's gone and found him at least twice so that's someone that i'm uh interested in talking to um so yeah very nice that's super

interesting and just as one specific example too i, there's so much content out there. It's it's sort of overwhelming. And the key is just to keep the right perspective of, you know, taking it as additive and fulfilling and things not, right? I found the same thing. I got on to Flickr. What a great resource Flickr can be in a lot of ways. It's just a photo hosting site, but people put a lot of photos on there of wild herps. There's just some phenomenal photographers on there, and you see some amazing herp photos. Another cool thing was Gavin when he, Gavin Bedford put out a request for photos of Kakadu glower dye and they had like, you know, bunch of responses with photos of Kakadu glower dye. I'm like, oh my goodness, that's amazing. You know, so I would love to keep seeing photos of Kakadu glower dye, you know.

Absolutely. Um, I would love to keep seeing photos of Kakadu Gloward. I, you know, it's interesting how much you miss, you know, how, what relatively little you're able to see just because of the immensity of the volume content, you know, you get onto to those, uh, social apps and they dictate what, what you see and their algorithm tells you what you want to see and understand. But yeah, it's cool to kind of do your own searches and find targeted species or whatever. So Flickr is a fun way to go about that. And a lot of times they'll say where the photo was taken or the general area or whatever. So you can kind of say, oh, that's what they look like in that area. Right.

Cool. Yeah. So I've obviously been on a little bit of a glowered eye kick after the whole experience. I can imagine. Oh, I did post a YouTube video on my search for glowered eye. So it's a five, eight minute video or something. And it kind of shows where i went and kind of my thought process conditions and yeah hiking out and things like that and then then it ends with the the

really close footage that i got in in nice um up in kundanara so cool fun stuff i'm still just geeked out i'll still watch the footage and just be excited about it. I've been going through my pictures and putting up photos. I know that Mitchell Eye picture that you just put up was really nice. It turned out really good. I'm really happy with some of the photos I got. I'll just be putting those up every day or two whenever I get the wind. Oh wait, I need to post a picture of this species that I saw or this one or this one. So, yeah, I've got plenty of fun pictures. That Scalaris picture turned out really cool, too.

I love their poses. He's like, you know, doing the Spider-Man thing on the tree. And I've got a few that are, you know, even one where he's where he's like holding onto the tree this way. But then his head's turned all the way around looking back at us. You know, it's pretty cool. That's absolutely cool. I need to do the same. Yeah.

There's just so much. I took way too many pictures. And then when I get home, I'm like, man, why didn't I get more pictures or video or whatever? You know, I didn't get enough.'s never enough yeah right oh well i i'm still still dreaming about that trip that was trip of a lifetime it was fantastic but now i want to go back you know i have a even a better feeling for what i need to do and where I need to go to get that accomplished. So maybe another trip to Darwin area is in order at some point. I think that's always, that's sort of the way it goes, right?

Are you ever really, and maybe foreshadowing, maybe that'll be a topic for a future show. I'm saying, you know, can you truly check off a place? Can you see all the things ostensibly that are there? We've hit on that before, but there's a specific idea, you know, associated with that. Yeah. A little teaser for what's coming up soon in our Reptile Fight Club future. So stay tuned. Keep listening to us.

Hopefully we haven't. I was looking back on kind of the episodes and when they came out and I'm like, oh man, some months we just weren't very good at recording many episodes. You know, some months we only have one and others we have one a week. And so we've kind of been hit or miss, I guess, a little bit. So I apologize for that. But hey, it's free. You get what you get. We're taking time out of our busy schedules to do this. But if you want to see more content, make more suggestions. Come on and fight with us. Absolutely. Anyway, after that, being mean, I'll say thanks for listening and we'll catch you again next time for

reptile.