Reptile Fight Club - Nicholas Vine on the Validity of Subspecies

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

In this episode, Justin and Rob are joined by discuss Nicholas Vine on the Validity of Subspecies. 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 another edition of top fight club i'm justin juhlender here with me is uh mr rob stone how you Great. Right on. No ahoy hoy this time, huh? All right. Well, today we got another great guest. Nick Vine is here, so we're excited to have him on and chat with him a bit. Thanks for coming on, Nick. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So I guess, you know, we've been in contact over the years, you know, a bit, kind of here and there. And you're doing some really cool stuff. So why don't you tell a little bit about yourself, kind of where you're from and how you got into reptiles maybe briefly and then what you're doing now. Yeah.

I mean, it's nothing new in terms of how I got into reptiles. It was like, you know, I grew up watching Steve Irwin. Yeah. I mean, it's nothing new in terms of how I got into reptiles. It was like, you know, I grew up watching Steve Irwin. I will say, so this ties into me later on, but I grew up going to Australia because I have family over there. Cool. So, you know, my parents lived there before I was born for a couple of years. Um, and so we have some friends in Sydney and, you know, like some of my earliest memories were handling a big Burmese Python at the Sydney reptile park. And, um, you know, there were water dragons in our friend's pool and, and stuff. Um, but yeah.

And then I, yeah, along with that came, I was always, I was never really like in the reptile scene. I was very much in my own little, little bubble. I didn't know how to really go herping. I just kind of incidentally found whatever I could find. And when I was 11, my mom finally gave in and let me get a bearded dragon. And, and then it was lots of negotiating and, and it was always no snakes, but, but lots of negotiations later I've had like frilled dragon and chameleons. And right now, right now I've got a fairly small collection, but yeah, been all over the place um red crusty geckos and bearded dragons and yeah and yeah and now i'm in

australia um for for university so that's that's where um that's where i've been for the past year and a half and i'm home right now but yeah um so is there like a break in the semester or whatever yeah yeah yeah so this is my summer break um because it's reversed summer there yeah yeah yeah you get to come home to cool weather and yeah yeah where are you from then so or where are you living now i guess yeah um i'm in just north of san francisco okay um so yeah and then in australia i'm i'm at at macquarie university in sydney okay cool. That's awesome. Is there a pretty good herpetology scene there at Macquarie? It's honestly, it's not known for it by any means, but you know, Rick Shine is there. So I found that out recently. I actually didn't know that when I applied. And then now actually next semester semester I've been talking to his lab assistant about potentially helping him, um, on a project, which is like kind of, kind of neat.

Um, but yeah, but I didn't, I didn't know that going into it. I'll, I'll, I'll say that there is, we have a behavioral biology lab that uses, uh, agurnia, um, and some other, some other cool stuff. Awesome. Well, that's really cool. So what are you studying then? What is that? Is that your project on agurnia and sociality or? Well, so right now I'm actually just an undergrad. Um, so I'm, I'm doing, yeah. So my degree is biodiversity and conservation. where that goes is yet to be determined um i may or may not choose to do a master's degree um one of my professors is kind of pressuring me to to like get better grades and and try to try to go for that but we'll see nice yeah we tend to do that yeah hey you thought about research yeah yeah that's cool now he's like well you can do what you love for the rest of your life and maybe you'll even get a museum job and like yeah you

know there's there's possibilities yeah that's for sure i always i always uh wondered what would have happened if i would have gone down that path because i was originally slated to be a herpetologist and get my degree there and and then i met my wife and she's like how many jobs are out there for herpetology and what kind of pay are you going to get? And then I thought, started thinking like, do I really want to pickle stuff? Do I want to, you know? Yeah. That's definitely a consideration. There was this grad student that was moving. He was, I think he'd finished a PhD and he was, you know, got a job somewhere. And so he was taken off and he had these cool pets, you know, that, uh, and my, uh, old business partner, Ben Morrill was taking care of him for him. And, uh, so I got to see his collection kind of thing. And then, um, I found out when he moved,

he just pickled everything just like, yeah. That's like, Oh my gosh, that's hardcore. So I can't really imagine. I mean, yeah. Yeah. So not, not the best, but so, so now you're kind of, yeah. Oh no, I'm just thinking about, I, because there is the behavioral biology lab, they don't, that's not really what they do. Um, so whether or not I'd actually do like the traditional herpetology or more, you know, sociality and reptiles is something that really interests me, but I don't know. I, I, I need to think about it a lot more. Yeah. Well, it seems like those kinds of specifics are going away and it's more like, yeah, we use this model as this, you know, to study this certain system or certain, you know, behavior or whatever, or genetics or, you know, like family

groups, you know, you can study or you can study bird or, you know, whatever. So, yeah, I guess that's part of the new new. Yeah. So. But, yeah, that's really cool. That's that's fun to be over in Australia. I'm so excited. I'm headed over in a month and a half here. So, yeah, I know. so i've heard yeah yeah i i thought maybe lucas would join us but he's yeah he's not uh he's local to you right he's over there yeah yeah he he he's actually so the pilbara rock monitors that i did they're now with him okay so so yeah that's where he got

them yeah yeah yeah yeah they're so cool That's one of my favorites for sure. They're, they're, they're, they're heartbreaking, but they're, they're really cool. Rob prefers the Kim,

Kimberly rocks. And I don't know, I'm kind of split. I, I, I thought I really liked those, uh, pill bar rocks so much better,

but I guess once you see, you know, see them both in the water, you're like, it's really hard to choose. Yeah. Well, Hey, the, the, uh, the, the Kimberleys that are up in Kakadu, those are definitely up there. But otherwise, I think Pilbara's are where it's at for me.

I just can't. The red, especially when you get a really nice contrasty one they're just beautiful now uh i i was thinking like the kimberly habitat would be totally different than the bill bar rock habitat but like i was up in uh um always the name uh kind of nerd kind of nerd thank you rob rob's my second brain so he remembers words that i that are not coming to my mouth. So, um, but yeah, Kununur is kind of like sandstone-y similar to, well, I guess Pilbara is not really sandstone much either. So more like the central Australia. Yeah.

I haven't been out there yet. So, but all I, all, when I envisioned the Pilbara, I think I envisioned just like Kirijini and the big red rock gorges and whatever. So, yeah. Um, the, and whatever so yeah um the um there's yeah there's some great areas out there let me know when you're headed out and i'll see if i'm i'm trying to line something up cool yeah so you've done a few herb trips while you're down there uh one one major one and then uh i've got some coming up. So you go with people from the university or herpers? So the one trip that I did to South Australia was with, I don't know if you might know him, Fryzy or Nasty.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was great. I just messaged him and we started talking and he was, uh, he was super nice. And like I mentioned wanting to go out and find stuff. And I, I had been there a year and a half and hadn't really gotten out to do any major herping yet. So I was like, it's about time. Um, and, but yeah, otherwise I, um, you know, I, I've been starting to meet a couple of

people locally, but it's been kind of a gradual, like getting to know the area, getting to know people I've been going to aid, uh, AHS meetings. Um, so it's, it's I think this semester is where it's really going to kind of come to fruition. I've got a couple of things. That's cool. Yeah. That's very cool. Well, it doesn't hurt to be where shine is, you know, read his papers and you'll get a lot of stuff there. Yeah. I had a chance to meet him and I chickened out.

I didn't like approach. I still haven't't met him i've only met his lab assistant yeah i'm like i i'm in lab meetings with him and i'm like a little bit i have actually i've talked to him about mimicry in a lab meeting once because that was like i'm because the other thing i'm into is kyanactus and so it was like the the you know but anyways yeah no i haven't spoken to him yet nice yeah i love kyanectus as well since yeah we share some interests here yeah they're cool snakes we found in southern california there uh on a trip rob and i were on and i found some on a couple other trips but yeah they're cool they're super neat yeah yeah. Well, so you said you had a bit of a collection. Do your family watch it or you farm it out to other folks?

Yeah, kind of both. So, yeah, Lucas has my monitors. I'm trying to breed them at the moment. I got one clutch and then my male died, unfortunately. Oh, gosh. Yeah. So that's a bit of a bummer but i had a spare so we'll see um and then i've got uh and then yeah my my mom has been a huge help um she's

not super psyched on everything but see uh you know i've got a tegu and and she likes the tegu and i also my my only snake aside from the kyanactus are as, I have an anaconda. And she's not so psyched on that. But, you know. Nice. Oh, that's cool. And some other obstinance. Sounds like you got a supportive family.

I was lucky to have the same thing when I was growing up. I had rattlesnakes and all sorts of stuff that my parents let me keep. So they were really, really supportive. Yeah, they're definitely not that cool. But yeah. Yeah. Well, they probably shouldn't have let me have them. I guess I'm just too whiny or something.

They're like, shut that kid up. Let him have what he wants. No, that's cool. Well, yeah. I don't know. I think one of my Womas may have ovulated recently, so I'm excited about that. Hopefully I switched up their caging and it seems to be having the effect, the desired effect. I guess we'll see when eggs come. So that's, that's the key if the eggs hatch out and are all looking good. So yeah, hopefully we'll have a good season here. And, um, so yeah, I think the blackhead females also ovulated and getting ready to lay maybe in a month or two. So we'll see how that goes again this year. And I don't know, sometimes those Aspidites, they just break my

heart, but we'll see if I can write the ship, uh, all the, I feel bad for all the successful Aspidites breeders listening to me complain about they're like it's not that hard dude uh but we'll see what happens yeah rob how's everything going at your place yeah all good i mean we're in the uh winter wonderland you know although we've now had two days this week where the storm transitioned from winter wonderland to class three kill storm unexpectedly. So that's been exciting. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, everything's, you know, um, low key here for sure. Man, that's mild here. We need a little bit of that snow coming our way, but it's just cold. So I always say if it's cold, it might as well snow.

Yeah. Just dreaming of Australia. That's all i can do in the winter well at least you have it coming up though so yeah yeah yeah that'll be fun i'm i've been looking at some new areas in alice springs uh so i'm excited to explore some new stuff and get back so it's like you know what since 2010 that was the first time i went to alice springs and so it's been a little while and and i i'm you know doing my research and looking at all the spots and saying, Oh, I have been there. I've seen that. Oh, that's where that was, you know, cause it's kind of faintly in your memory. You have a picture of it, but you forgot where you took the picture and you're like, Oh, that was a such and such gorge or whatever. So it's nice to kind of put things there. I,

I can't for the life of me find where I put my notes from that trip. I took these notes from the 2010 and 2011 and I think even the 2013 trips and can't find them. It's driving me nuts. Cause it's got like, you know, look at places where I found pygmy pythons in Western Australia or, you know, that kind of stuff. I want those, uh, you know, the records or the GPS, uh, coordinates for those finds just so I know where I found them, you know, but anyway, so yeah, it's, it's been fun, uh, prepping for that and seeing a lot of good targets out there. What's that?

You know, yeah. And looking at it, I'm like, We're prepping for that and seeing a lot of good targets out there. What's that? Yeah. And looking at it, I'm like, how did I miss seeing a Stimson's Python? There's seemingly everywhere out there. There's like one stretch of road where the records are just a solid line along the road. It's crazy. So hopefully I'll get to see a central Stimson eye. That would be nice. All right.

Well, we are here. Nick brought up a topic. And so we said, do you want to come on and fight it? And he was nice enough to come on the following week. So we appreciate you being on here. And we're going to talk about subspecies and whether or not that's a reasonable classification status. So we will flip the coin between Rob and myself to see who gets the honor of fighting you, and then we'll go from there.

Okay, Rob, you know the drill. Tails. Tails. It is tails. You win the flip this week. Oh, interesting. Would you like to fight or put your opinion on both sides? Yeah, so I'm torn because so last week, so it hasn't come out yet, right,

when we talked to Jordan Parrott? Yeah. And, you know, you guys had such a good thing going that I didn't want to jump, you know, I'd taken the sort of moderator or both sides role. Um, but I think I'll do it again because on this topic, even more clearly, I feel kind of for both sides on this. So yeah, I'll be, I'll be gaming either way. Okay. Sounds good. Um, all right, Nick, go ahead and call it for your side there. All right, heads. Heads. I'm the double loser this week. Nicely done. Do you want to take pro subspecies or con subspecies?

I think a lot of my research has been in the con subspecies category so i'd like to argue that side okay i'd like to hear some some good arguments for that because yeah i've got i've got mixed feelings as well of course i'm sure we all do so yeah it'd be good to kind of flesh out the topic for sure so yeah as most listeners have figured out by now this is not truly a knock down drag out fight. It's more of a discussion and a gentlemanly agreements between friends. So, but, uh, yeah. So as the coin toss winner, do you want to defer and let me go first or do you want to kick it off? Um, yeah, I'll defer. Okay. All right. So I guess, the case for me lies with just classification in general, right? following because it can vary from, you know, Varanus that has all these crazy disparate lines of Varanids versus, you know, some of these other ones where they're, you know, dissecting out species from, you know, that probably shouldn't be species in another

classification scheme or whatever. So I guess my main thing my main thing is I, I, I think because I've, you know, done so much with carpet pythons, that's kind of what's drawn me to that subspecies debate, whether or not there should be subspecies and, and I could see it going either way. But I think the thing that drives me nuts is when they say it's all just carpet pythons, you know, like from, from the tip of the Cape York down to diamond python, they're just all the same. And I'm like, I don't believe that. So in that regard, where they're trying to say everything's Morelia Spoloda, then I say there needs to be a more finer breakdown of what that means and where, you know, those kind of things. And, you know, looking into that and looking at, you know, some genetic work that's been done as well as various biogeographical barriers and things like that kind of led me to the conclusion is there are differences, especially between something like an inland and a diamond and a, you know, southern coastal carpet. So that led to, you know, our kind of go at the taxonomic scheme of carpet pythons. And I think if I were to go more drastic, I might even say that diamond pythons are a different

species from southern coastals, from inlands, you know, that I could be just happy with that as well. So I guess maybe I don't necessarily think there has to be subspecies, but in certain cases, I think there probably should be something more fine than just, they're all carpet pythons, you know, that attitude. So that's kind of where I'm coming from. Yeah, it's funny. So I don't know carpet pythons as well as I know, like, it's, it's, it's funny that you bring up Varanus because Varanus is kind of what like sent me down this this rabbit hole um because well so one of the things in this isn't this isn't i'll say this and then i'll go more about my view on subspecies but veranus are kind of known for having subgenera which i am not a fan of because the way that i have the way that i

gather taxonomy is it's all kind of centered around the species like the species is the basic unit of taxonomy and we can argue all day long what is a species and what isn't a species and how do we classify species and is it genes or morphology or whatever um but at the end of the day like a genus is as i understand it the next grouping essentially above a species in terms of like these these species kind of cluster together there's no definition for a genus um which is why i'm a little bit iffy on the whole subgenus thing um they should just be general but yeah um but with subspecies the reason that i can that i'm not entirely sold on the idea is because there have been so many different definitions for a subspecies over the years

um in the sense that like you know like i like I, this is actually something I, I would, wouldn't mind asking Rob about with the, um, Oreo Cryptopus because I, because they're, I don't know anything about them, but I, you know, they're all classified as different subspecies. And I'm just wondering, is that a data deficient thing? Have the genes been done on that? Or is it kind of like a, cause that's, that's one example where I can't say like with the carpet pythons, I can, I can see, you know, decline, so to speak from, you know, the S Southeastern up to the Cape York peninsula. And then there's kind of the, the break in the Gulf of Carpentaria and then you've got the Darwins and whatnot. But I don't know anything about porphyry.

So I'm actually kind of curious if you know much about that. Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of the Dr. Kevin Messenger's book, the Rat Snakes to China is really good and has a great, Dr. J loves the pinpoint location stuff, and his book utilizes that in terms of the structure across the porphyry subspecies forms. This actually leads right into sort of my main thought or point, right, across this argument, and it kind of fit into both, and the area of cryptophis is a perfect point. So before I get into that, short answer to your question, there is a lot of discrepancy in available data just because it's such a broad range of area that I would say the short answer is yes. There's definitely not, you know, it's not like there's a clear line of records in the way that we see with carpets in Australia to see that range. What I would say is that one utility of taxonomy or scientific nomenclature, right, is the ability to ensure that we're all talking about the same thing.

And I sort of take subspecies as being equivalent to form. So a recognizable characteristics that the average person can, you know, non-lay person or, you know, with some expertise can look at and perceive, oh, that's different from X is different from Y, even if they're fundamentally not that distinct. You know, again, to Justin's point relative to the sort of depending on what taxonomists we're talking about relative to their degrees of separation or years of separation and all those things. Right. So to me, I think a lot of the utility in subspecies is really giving us a universal name for what are perceived to be different forms. And that's sort of, I guess, where I would see it fitting in. And that's probably what we really have with the porphy's is a situation where, okay, they, to the, I guess, the one that's actually to me, and maybe again, it's a data deficient thing. So porphy, porphy is from, porphyrasis, porphyrasis is from India. And that, you know, as a non-exporting country for the entirety of the time those species really have been sort of aware you know we've been aware of

them in the in the hobby at least but really we're talking very few specimens of those overall in some ways I guess if that's the nominant form it looks closest to between a pulcher and a laticincta in terms of being a heavily banded snake, but without the laticincta's characteristic of orange into red. But all of those, right, are, I guess, I also see that as a point for you, right, relative to saying structurally, they're pretty similar. They do have size differentiation. There is sort of how they align along the spine, right, whether they're pretty similar. They do have size differentiation. There is sort

of how they align along the spine, right? Whether they're kind of bread loaf shaped versus circular, there are some differences across those forms, but those are probably to me species rather than all being, oh, they all have to be this porphyriacist from India. At the same time, it's serving the utility that it does in terms of saying they're certainly all different from one another. Right. So that there you do see this range. There is some sort of in-between specimens on a couple of them where we've gotten additional records in the last five to 10 years. As I say, Dr. Messenger actually put together a really cool PowerPoint on that. We had a conversation, I think, on colubrid and colubroid a handful of years ago where we were, or maybe it was even off the chat. And then we talked about,

I had gone on and talked about it a little bit, but he had a whole PowerPoint slide of all these different visualizations from different spots. And it was interesting that there certainly is regionality to those looks, but yeah, there were some interesting ones for sure. That's, that's kind of the complication too, is because, you know, you get into different habitats and you're, that's definitely going to push for different, you know, visual morphotypes and things like that. So, you know, relying on color or pattern

or things like that, it can be deceiving, you know, for sure. And so I, you know, sure and uh so i you know it's i guess that's the kind of the coastal carpet jungle carpet thing where you know if it's in a plane it looks like a coastal if it gets pushed in the jungle the the black and yellow does a better job of hiding hiding them from predators or whatever so you know that's kind of those kind can, can, I imagine if you took a yellow, you know, or a brown colored coastal and put it in the jungle in a protected, you know, arena, eventually the babies would start looking like jungle carpets or something, you know, if it had a selective pressure from, from predators and such. But, um, other than that, you know, I, I guess we have a lot of species definitions too. And, and so I've seen different taxonomists use different species concepts. And so, you know,

I think that's kind of what's, what's driving some, some of us insane, you know, you know, like why did you go with that method or, you, you know, the folks that just did the entry? Well, just right. A few years ago. Well, yeah. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned. So I went herping with somebody who's actually worked in Damien Escort's lab. Yeah. And so I got to talk to him a little bit so, so actually, sorry. So one thing I'll, I'll mention that I wanted to, uh, that I've thought about before is with carpet pythons, um, that when we're looking at, like looking at differences between animals based on morphology or based on scalation or whatever, it's kind of like, we're using those as a proxy for genetics um and so i while i agree

that like it's multifaceted um i think that at at the end of the day assuming that you have enough genetic data that's that's the caveat is that assuming that you have like you can't be using just two mitochondrial genes to separate species yeah um but assuming that you have enough genetic data theoretically that should be the species like concept now there's nuance like two species can exist with some level of gene flow and whatnot like there's there's lots of caveats and that gets really complicated when you get into like continental taxa right um but with carpet pythons the thing that i've thought about a lot is that they are such a polymorphic species that they are especially susceptible to being selected for in relatively few generations for whichever habitat they're in. in herpetoculture is people say, well, why haven't, uh, why haven't people taken ball pythons like the carpet Python people have and selectively bred them to make prettier ball pythons? Like everybody's just focused on these multi-gene combos. Um, and I would argue that, that ball

pythons just aren't that polymorphic naturally. And so inherently there's, you know, there's the natural polymorphism in carpet pythons make them a great candidate for those adaptive pressures. And so, you know, I don't know, like, talking about the southern coastals and the diamonds, I don't know if in a perfect world where I could see all of evolutionary history and I could see, okay, these, these branched off from here and they made us a gradual climb up North. And like, I could see a world where those are the same species. But in the same, in the same vein, if they separated at some point,

there was some barrier to gene flow between the two and then they reconnected where we now have integrates yeah you know there is that level of gene flow but they could theoretically be two separate species and that's where i think the genetics don't lie um as far as i know again i'm year, I'm a second year undergrad. So, you know, well, we like to pretend we're, you know, keen on taxonomy as well. Yeah. Yeah. We're, we're, yeah. I'm sure any taxonomist listening to that is probably like pulling their hair out going, these guys are morons. But yeah, right. Yeah. But I mean, just kind of logically thinking about things, you know, I guess, um, you know, a good example is kind of that, that split between Southern New Guinea and Northern Australia, where you don't really see that much difference.

They were connected, you know, what, 8,000 years ago in the Pleistocene. And, you know, we love the Pleistocene, of course. But, you know, so there was some gene flow at that time, but now there's water there and there's no gene flow. And so, you know, since it's so dynamic and it's changing all the time, you know, is that really a different thing or is it not, you know? And so I guess I could go either way on that, but I guess the idea is you recognize there is a barrier there right now, you know? And so however we're looking at them, they're changing on their own evolutionary trajectory for the moment. Now, is that change going to be far enough along that when they recombine or have that access again to that gene flow across the Gulf of Carpentaria or the straits there, is that going to be – are they going to say wait i'm not the same species as you are they going to go oh finally my long lost lover across the sea here we go again kind of thing so

and and of course you know you see genetic drift even in so i love the example of these so we we research do research with mice and we get mice from different breeding facilities for our studies with virology. We got mice from one facility and they just wouldn't replicate the disease parameters that we were seeing in the same strain, inbred mouse strain, that was from the same company, but at a different location. And for whatever reason, those mice were resilient to whatever virus we were trying to infect them with. So, you know, the mice from one facility would die and the mice from the other would not. And so there's enough genetic drift between those two populations of the same inbred mouse strain that they were different enough in regards to virus

infection. Does that mean they're different species? Probably not, you know, but we should recognize that there's this form and there's that form or else we're going to run into trouble in our, in our research, you know, if we get it from the wrong, we try to use the wrong form for the wrong study. So if that, you know, kind of illustrates a point, there's got to be something to that, you know, and Ben, Ben would always kind of mess with people and say, you know, once you take it out of the wild, it's on, it's on a separate evolutionary trajectory. So therefore it doesn't belong to that species. It's just a snake in a box, you know? So you'd always mess with people who are purists trying to keep everything,

everything, all the lineage pure or whatever. He's like, nope, sorry, you're, you're dictating who it breeds too. So therefore it's not that species anymore. And I believe that is a species concept, right? Some people will argue. Yeah. And so like, right. And that's the perfect example of that's the issue is we can't see into the future where like, theoretically, those New Guinea carpet pythons could be incipient species and they could be on their own evolutionary trajectory. But then, you know, what if we have an ice age and all of a sudden they're reconnected? Like I would say based on the genes we could, or I based off of what I've seen and based on the genes as they stand currently, they're probably the same species as cake York's. Uh, but you know, who knows a million years from now they could be whatever. Um, and, you know, maybe carpet pythons being so adaptable, they might be, they might be able to evolve faster than another, say, I don't know, um, you know, say your ball pythons, like if a ball

python got stranded on an Island somewhere, it probably is going to stay a ball python for a lot longer because they seem less, uh, adept or less, less able to adapt, um, to, to like less polymorphic, you know, and inherently a more like the, uh, you know, I think the Kyanactus, well, the sister, sister group to Kyanactus, the Sonora are a great example of a, an incredibly polymorphic taxa um to the point where you get like ridiculous amounts of within population like some are banded some are stripes some are unicolor some are brown some like all over the place um and so they actually make for a almost an extreme example of that that potential like adaptive radiation that can happen um but yeah that and so that's why i i'm not sure if you um i listen to a lot of podcasts um and i've heard you talk about the

herp highlights folks but i don't know if you uh know about the squamates podcast with um yeah mark shirts yeah yeah that's a good one too yeah It is. I wish they would do more of them because I really liked that one. But, but he's talked about and his, I, cause he is a taxonomist and he is somebody who's very, you know, by necessity working in Madagascar. And his species concept is the unified, his species concept. The one that he chooses to align with is the unified species concept where, you know, every species is kind of evaluated on its own, in its own frame without, you know, we're not trying to put things in boxes necessarily, but we're treating each species like its own hypothesis that needs different lines of evidence to be drawn in order to support it so i don't know where i was going with that but yeah no i mean i think that's that's

you know the the way i kind of see it as well as like you know you you use all these you use all these different tools to say okay there's a reason that these are a different form than this, you know, and you can bring in genetics or, um, isolation from others and, and, or morphogenics or whatever you want to use, um, to say, yeah, these are, these are a different form or a different type or whatever. And however you want to classify that as fine with me, as long as you recognize that distinction and that difference, you know, obviously like the Kimberlyberly rock monitors from um the kakadu are completely different from those in kind of nura i mean they're separated by hundreds of miles of yeah no man land kind of thing you know guaranteed they're they're different species at least you know if you know so i think

saying oh no you know they're the same form, I think saying, oh no, you know, they're the same form. That's just silliness. It's just insufficient data. So we just kind of go, well, they look the same. So they're the same kind of attitude and they don't even really look the same either. They're very unique in the way they look. If you saw pictures, you could probably pick them out if you'd seen enough. So, um, I guess that's, I, maybe it's more impatience on my part. It's like, yeah, let's get this figured out. But you know, the fact that they have to be funded and they have to go out and collect samples, that stuff takes time. And then figuring out what to look at with genetic analysis, what's going to change and what's

going to be hyper variable and what's going to, you know, be more stable and structured and, you know, using all stable and structured and, you know, using all that we're still kind of maybe not so new on the scene with genetic, you know, uh, use of genetics for, for taxonomy, but I don't know, that's the, the struggle, I guess, that I'm having is just impatience. Like, come on, we know there's something different. Let's get it out there. Let's make this known. And not the hoser method of saying, like, I'm just going to name everything and then let somebody else do the work. So, yeah, that's the trick, I guess, with taxonomy. It's just a frustrating thing.

Another recent example that, you know, I think I'm not quite sure how it fits in here, but I do think it's of note is. So as part of putting together my forms lists relative to U.S. venomous and whatever I was reading through right and right. A lot of the utility associated with the old literature to me is looking at those things that were called subspecies before that we don't recognize now and saying, OK, are there defining characteristics here that would fit into, you know, calling this a form. Right. So that would give us atricodatus. But an example is actually in the coral snake. So in Fulvius, as I was looking through that, I was previously unfamiliar with the postulated form, essentially the Dade County coral snake. Right. So all of Fulvius from Louisiana up through North Carolina was considered Fulv the fulvius from louisiana up through north carolina was considered fulvius fulvius and then in 1928 schmidt based on a specimen from 1920 had said oh well actually there you know these ones in dade county they have reduced black stippling in the red bands

and in some of the males there is not a divided supranial scale you know and it's like okay I don't think I have to actually find one in Dade County I don't think I'm going to put that as a forum on my list less black speckling yeah and they did highlight you know highlighted in the description was saying well we see the same thing in the Getchella from that area

essentially the hypomelanism that's sort of common to animals in that area and I believe Dade County also includes the keys right so if you're talking about keys corns and that as you know i just said the getchella you know that's in the description but i mean nevertheless right if we're saying this is something that's taken as you know acceptable to have it's all one form from far eastern louisiana up through southern North Carolina. But this one county, and we're getting reduced black stippling in the red, I don't think even my sort of comprehensive nature would take that into the list. Yeah, it's funny too.

So similarly, in my research with the Sonora-related stuff, there's over 100 hundred years of literature classifying and reclassifying and reclassifying sonora because there's these different morphs so i would i would almost argue so you're and and subspecies like what you were saying before it is almost just like an impatience thing a lot of the time because now we can recognize that all of these things well there's two different clades but more or less all these things are the same they all interbreed and they all you know they're all they all evolved from tri-colored ancestors and then it kind of seems like they're losing that

because a lot of the populations no longer occur with a species to mimic um but you know there used to be sonora miniata and then between those there was miniata miniata and miniata linearis to to denote the difference between the banded ones and the striped ones and it's like and now we understand you know there is population difference but the difference isn't in the phenotype necessarily in like what they look like but it's in the population composition and the proportion of the different phenotypes. Um, and I mean, there's so many more, there's Sonora saxotilis and Sonora erythropus and like literally so many, so many, um, uh, that are no longer used. And so, yeah. And it seems like a lot of the time subspecies are used kind of as a way of saying something is something without necessarily having the data to back it. And it's used as a placeholder.

And, but that's one of the uses. Like, and then, you know, then there's the whole, like, encitina debate with, with, you know, it's used to split up a cline. Yeah. And so I think that the issue isn't with, I agree that I think that splitting up species into distinct groups to make it easier for, for the sake of being able to talk about them, you know, that's why we have taxonomy is so that we can talk about, talk about animals in a way that everybody understands. But at the same time,

you get a lot of confusion when the definition of subspecies changes from person to person. And I think that it's because subspecies are such an, maybe not unregulated but not as thought about say as the species definition it creates a lot more chaos for sure um we we got a suggestion a while back from uh mark heath to talk about uh subs using you know using taxonomy as a tool for conservation. And I wonder sometimes,

I wanted to bring up an example and get your thoughts on this one. So the Shark Bay Woma population, where they've been basically extirpated throughout the wheat belt and throughout a large swath of Western Australia where they used to occur. We haven't seen records since the 50s or 60s. And that, and they were pretty few and far between at that time too. So this little island, you know, population of Womas that have persisted in Shark Bay, you know, do we classify those as a different subspecies because they don't have genetic flow with other populations and it would have the added effect of recognizing them as something distinct and worth protection? What do you think? Well, just real quick. So the topic, again, as a forms herper, my question has been, do I have to find cryptic species, right?

Exactly on the encephalian context or in this context, right? So if the woma that I saw was in Shark Bay, have I seen a woma? And yeah, that's really sort of the inverted angle of that question. You know, not so much in the subspecies discussion, but yeah, I've been playing with that idea a lot. And my feeling is generally no. So to me, rather than Nipper's approach, right, where he's trying to find every one, I guess he's finding species, not necessarily subspecies. I think he's found what all but maybe a couple of the subspecies of snake in Europe. Right. But in terms of, OK, if if we're talking about cryptic speciation within even within a population right do you if you've seen one at that area have you seen them all if you you can't even know right if the only determination is available based on a non-in non-in-hand look right it's all on the inside what do you do with that and to me they have to be the same because if you can't tell them apart uh visually

then you know that's you've seen the form from that place yeah yeah well and that's i think the difference oh sorry go ahead no no no i was just gonna say that's i think the difference between like a herpetoculturist a herper and a scientist in this regard is like, I'd agree with you. Like if I, you know, talk, hearing people talk about frog taxonomies. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, I mean, I don't, I do not disagree with like, you know, I've, I've heard, I've heard a couple people talk about how the validity of using, um, uh, what is it? Bio, bio harmonormonics to differentiate species. And I don't disagree with, you know, if the genes don't lie and there is a way to differentiate them, even if it's not physically, I think that, yeah, that's a valid taxon. I don't disagree with the idea or the concept of cryptic diversity. But yeah, but but you know, being a field herper,

you know, I'm, I'm currently while I'm home trying to find every subspecies of Ensatina just for fun, cause I'm currently unemployed and I've just have gotten into photography. So, um, but, but I'm not also trying to find all the integrates because that's, you know, a task in and of itself, you know, a task in and of itself. You know, like I've gone around the top of their range and found Sierras and Oregons and Yellow-Eyed's. And I found a couple of integrates by default. But it's like, I would say that a Sierra integrated with an Oregon is, it looks, you can tell what it is. You can tell it's a different thing.

But, you know, is that a different thing? Um, yeah. And that's where encetinas are a little bit of a weird thing. Cause they're not like really a ring species. Like they're, they're kind of a, they're used as that, that, that example a lot of the time, but there have been barriers separating their range over time. So, um, but I agree with you. Like, yeah, if I was was if i was herping for them i'm not trying to find every single cryptic species well i mean i guess you could go back to the kimberly rock monitor example would you want to see both the kakadu form and the eastern form with the idea

that they'll probably eventually be split yeah and we you know we'll have two different species there so you might as well if you're in the area you might as well try to knock them out while you're there kind of thing for sure but that's a much longer period of separation right so with the shark bay stuff we're talking maybe you know and i get your point right relative to future state you know being in this isolated pocket what might happen but we're talking about well there was a band of you know know, of range up to 50, 60 years ago, something like that. It's in the last, certainly in the last couple hundred years that we've isolated them based on human activity, right? Human habitat modification. I was just thinking, too, right in that same vein, something Justin and I have seen, right?

There's this particular spot in, not quite in the boot heel of New Mexico, but where you get Mojave prairies, right? And they're very,ave prairies, right? And they're very, have a look, right, to them. And we've, well, we've seen one, right, a little one. Yeah. You know, and it's like, well, is that a thing? Well, they certainly are recognizable, as you say, about the encetinas. And they're known from that spot and not really, you know, just, it's not a general thing. It's something particular to that location.

Is that, is that then a form? Is that, does that go in the list? I don't know. And I've kind of said no, even though it falls into that. Okay. It occurs only in this particular place. Well, it'd be like the intergrade zone for, you know, coastal carpets and diamonds. Yeah. That form is a different form. Mojaves are, you know. Yeah. That's just a mix between two different

forms that are unique and identifiable and then when you have the mix mash it's it's a little less easy yeah it's like yeah you can still tell that they're a mix but yeah that was interesting seeing some of those uh crossed uh crotalids too like the clobber mixed with the the willard i was it clobber and yeah or lepidus willard i hybrid uh yeah kind of cool but yeah well and well and an interesting example that i'd say is what what was formerly the two subspecies of veranus stori where uh to your point about field herping if as they were subspecies i i i'll admit i've never kept either so i don't really i can't tell the difference visually i'm sure if i spent some time looking at them i probably could but they're they're relatively similar and they're not

necessarily high up on my bucket list to see so if i if i ticked one i probably would have ticked both boxes um but come to find out, Stori are more closely related to the Achanthurus complex than they are to Acreatis. So that's an example, I think, of where taxonomy might influence my field herping, where I'm now like, well, if this plays with this, and I would definitely consider Achanthurus to be way different from Acreatis than, you know. and that's actually, that was the basis on a broader scale.

Why, going back to the Chionactus, that was the basis for which Chionactus and Chylomeniscus were sunk into Sonoras because it was found that Sonora were paraphyletic um so you you bring up a good point and and and that's where i think that like hobby taxonomy almost needs to be kind of its own thing um and we need to stop arguing like like when they when when s square sunk um what was it children stimpsons and the children's pythons he wasn't saying all right everybody go breed your children's to your simpsons pythons he was just saying hey like genetically this is this is how it turns out and you know i've looked at it and it i don't know it looks okay to me but i'm also not gonna if i get children's and simpsons down the road you know they look different in the hobby i don't know yeah well yeah i mean and and i think they showed like data that supported the opposite too you know where it looked like there was pretty distinct.

They said, well, this one came close to the range, so we can't say there's no interbreeding, but you can have interbreeding between different species. The way I saw it is they had the way that it played it out is the currently recognized children's pythons and Stimson's pythons are not what they are genetically. And so we have this population of children's pythons that would be children's pythons, but they don't aren't associated with the children's pythons that are currently children's pythons. And so it was something like, you know, we can either split these into three species, but that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. So let's just sync them for the sake of not, you know, not changing the definition of what a children's python is or resurrecting a new species name or not resurrecting, but naming a new species or whatever it was they chose again

i'm not a taxonomist though so i don't know yeah it rubbed me the wrong way i think they should have gone the opposite way and yeah and that's absolutely fair and that's why you know the same deal with sonora there there's a paper in the paper that sunk uh chylaminiscus and kyanactus i'm like i you know you have the choice of either resurrecting or of either naming two new genera or sinking all of them and i'm like you should have named the two new genera because you you elected to use subgenera instead which is its own can of worms yeah for sure and you know i guess that's just the thing is we have an idea of what they are especially cap you know hobbyist that mentality yeah i agree you know we do have kind of our own taxonomy.

I mean, we have localities that don't don't follow, you know, scientific, you know, look at look at the Alterna, the Alterna localities. It's like, is it really that much of a stretch for us to just kind of have our own, you know, hobby accepted taxonomy? Yeah. Well, and another funny thing with that was, you know, we had this idea of what a carpet python looked like based on what carpets were kept in captivity in the U.S. Right. Yeah. Yeah. This is a jungle. This is a coastal. And then I went over there. I'm like,

this jungle looks like a coastal and this coast. Yeah. It's like, yeah, there's no this. This coastal looks just like a jungle down in southern, you know, near Brisbane and a very jungly looking animal. And so, I mean, there's so much diversity in feed type. And that was kind of one of the ideas behind the first book is to, you know, lay that out. Right. You know, illustrate that. So I hope we accomplish that. Um, you know, and, and I think too, is it like, like Rob was saying with the, the, the old books from the fifties and sixties and stuff, um, you know, they, they had, they were pretty data deficient back then, especially in regards to reptiles and their, their distribution. Now we have so many people going so many places and cars and, you know, trucks running over stuff.

And, you know, so we have a lot more records and a lot more idea of what happens where you know to some extent of course there's still some gaps in our knowledge and holes i still want to go looking for those brettles pythons that are up north uh yeah west of the main population kind of isolated out there i think that'd be cool to go somebody needs to go find those again you know because i think there's like several records from what the narrows something like that the granites yeah the granites yeah yeah so i why nobody has gone back well maybe somebody has then and they just haven't published that but that would be kind of a fun little expedition to go up there yeah and you could you know go to some really cool habitat i mean it's out in the middle of nowhere, but you know, you could get some cool Woma activity out there, you know,

in, um, in that area too. But, uh, yeah, so that, you know, that's, we have this idea of what things should be based on what we want them to be or what we think they should be and whether or not that matches with reality. You know, I, I'm not suggesting there should be a separate breddle subspecies, but maybe the line, you know, is and I guess one example is somebody just recently or, you know, within the last five or six years found amiae, nephorus amiae in like over the border in Western Australia, kind of outside the accepted range. And, you know, that's kind of cool when you see those things pop up. Now, of course, you know, somebody just found a blackhead down in the Null Arbor plain.

And I don't necessarily think that is a natural occurrence. You know, somebody probably let it go or it escaped or something out there. But yeah, or hitched a ride in a truck and ended up in the null arbor you know so i don't think that's that should we should get excited and yeah have a range extension but you know those well and talk talking about your carpet pythons like you know uh australian herpetoculture could really throw a wrench in a lot of those things because all of a sudden you know coastal carpets are showing up in sydney and vice versa and i'm not saying it happens all the time but there's definitely i'm on a couple of facebook groups

where people are like you know that will post a picture and say hey i've got this snake in my yard can someone come get it and they're like oh that's a jag yeah that's not supposed to be there right or brettles or whatever yeah there was an olive python that was weirdly misplaced. And you see those records from time to time, like there's this or that way outside where it should be. It's most likely an escaped captive or a hitchhiker. I mean, sometimes those road trains go long distances and I could easily see one just kind of curling up somewhere up in the you know up in the inner workings of the truck and then falls out thousands of miles where from where it should be so um i don't know the thing with that blackhead that's interesting is a question of like how long okay presuming it wasn't you know it's it's not uh shenanigans on the part of the poster is how long do you think

that could survive there right as you highlighted it's well below sort of the poster is how long do you think that could survive there? Right. As you highlighted, it's well below sort of the latitude, right. That they're adapted to be in. Right. So the question is, and maybe that's in a different year, a different time of year, maybe it's a different answer, but it's an interesting question. Well, and I think that's well as illustrated by the Burmese pythons in South Florida, you know, when do they become their own taxonomy? I mean, they're definitely having different environmental pressures

and cold snaps and all sorts of stuff that they're adapting to. Well, haven't they proposed, like some people have proposed naming them their own thing. Or a densest or something, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's another example of where we can't really see the future. I mean, that's a pretty obvious example of like, hey, these things are never going to come in contact with native berms again. But I think the whole Australopoplin region is a really interesting case of – it's evolution in action right like you know we can say these you know poplin carpets are

different from from cape yorks and uh you know poplin i don't know scrub pythons or or frilled dragons are different from australian frilled dragons but at the same time they're not are they different enough um and that's where the that's where the nuance comes in i actually i did want to because you mentioned the um potentially using subspecies as a or taxonomy as a tool for conservation um and this is something that i've thought about too because one of the exceptions that i've thought about before to to when to use subspecies is like hey this is you knowpecies are, so subspecies can be, are recognized by conservation organizations and by governments and are valid. Like, they can be conserved.

I mean, look at the San Francisco garter snake. Like, you can't touch them, but a red-sided garter snake is, you know, fair game. And so I've heard that argument before, but I just kind of, this might be my own personal opinion, but I just think that it's doing a disservice to the science of taxonomy to kind of use it as a tool where, why can't a, and this is more of like a question for, you know, governing bodies and whatnot but like why can't a population your shark bay womas or locally we have a tule elk reserve um that is you know isolated to the point of the tip of point rays um that is the same subspecies as all the other tule elk but they are protected just like the other tule elk the individual populations um why does it need to be its own subspecies to be considered a population that's worth conserving uh and because because then you would be kind of making an exception to the rules of taxonomy um in order to do that

yeah no that's a good point and and i think uh may confuse the matter because if you ever wanted to reintroduce some animals into that historic range, you know, like they have tried to do things. Yeah. Indigo. Yeah. You know what? If they're considered different subspecies or something, then all of a sudden you're making all these natural or integrates or something, which is probably not the case. Right. Well, I mean, tiger quills are a good example of that, where I believe, I'm not sure of the exact species, but they've recently released Western quills into the Flinders.

I'm not sure if it's Westerns or tigers or whichever, but essentially the original population, whether it was a species or subspecies, was extirpated. And now they've brought in western quolls, which are notably not the same thing as what once was there. But they've evaluated the area, and they've determined that they've been able to make an argument for why they should be introduced into that protected habitat. Yeah. So again, it's not really the taxonomy it's, and this is where I guess the difference is between a taxonomist and an ecologist is like an ecologist just sees if it's fulfilling that role in the

ecosystem, it's the same thing. Yeah. But a taxonomist. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting.

You bring that up. Jordan just mentioned it. I knew that was what you were going to say. Yeah. Yeah. Just mentioned that last week. So he that up. Jordan just mentioned it. I knew that was what you were going to say. Yeah. Yeah. Jordan just mentioned that last week. So he saw a few of them in the Flinders. So, oh yeah. It's, it's a successful reintroduction. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and they're talking about them like competing with cats and stuff because

they're just, they're that, you know, bad-ass, not, maybe not in the Flinders, but, but elsewhere. Um, it's funny you actually mentioned jordan because he's um i i met him at ihs oh yeah yeah yeah and he he actually spoke highly of you yeah i can't remember if that was on the recorded podcast or if that was just afterwards but he he mentioned you he's like oh yeah nick yeah great guy i know just you just missed each other inside i know it was it was it was, it was a bummer that that didn't work out, but, um, but yeah, he was, uh, he was a huge help. I mean, even in my,

when I, I, when I went and found my Kyanactus, he was, he was, I was on the phone with him and he was coaching me through. Oh yeah. Find them and all that. So. Oh, he knows his stuff when it comes to Southern California, man. Seriously. I'm looking forward to hearing his episode. Cause when he sent me the picture of, of, um, what he found, uh, it's pretty, it's pretty spectacular. Yeah. That, uh, that story was probably one of my favorites from that episode. Yeah.

Just, it hits home, you know, I mean, I definitely wish we would have found it when, when we were there, but you know, it's really cool that at least one of us found it. I mean, I didn't see any snakes when I well, I wasn't in that area, but like I didn't see any snakes while I was down there. And yeah, very snake. It seems really snake deficient. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. I mean, there's there's records of Stimson's pythons down there, but they're not very they're kind of few and far between.

And, you know, the carpets are hitting us and there's some womas a little further north that we went up and tried to find and we saw a track that looked like it could have been either a really big mulga or a or a woma yeah um it was a big snake and so yeah just missed one maybe so yeah that's uh when when you have something that spends 70 of its time in burrows or underground or more you know it's right hard to hard to catch those out in the on the right at the right time so yeah yeah that's uh same kind of thing we're like where's all the snakes we saw yes you to suda and uh and a big mulga and that was about it on our trip. We saw two snakes over two weeks, you know, we tried, we definitely, we put in the, I mean, I was only there for a couple of days,

but we definitely put in the hours and, you know, I kind of wanted to see a Brachyrophis just to be able to like, just to compare it to our, our American shovel noses, you know, they're, they're very convergent. And yeah, we did, we saw a dead Western brown. I think we saw a DOR Western brown, but that was it. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Speaking of those Brachyrophis, I've seen a couple different species of those. Yeah. I mean, they're quite a bit larger, of course. Yeah. They seem different. They kind of have a different structure to them and stuff. So yeah. It never dawned on me that they were, yeah. Convergent with, uh, and kind of act as that's cool.

Yeah. And I, so I, you know, I, um, I'm very vocal about my love for kind of act as an aura and all of them. Um, and so I posted there's a Facebook group and, um, Jordan actually commented and. Um, and so I posted there's a Facebook group and, um, Jordan actually commented and was like, and, and mentioned how they're, they're behaviorally quite different. Um, and how, you know, your kind of actives are a lot more flaily. Uh, uh, but so that's why I wanted to find one, right. Because they are even in the, even, you know, they're called, uh, they're, they're called coral snakes, I think sometimes.

And so, and because of that banding that they can have. And it's just interesting that they're not only sand swimmers, they not only have that same rostral adaptation, but they also have, some of them are unbanded, some of them are banded. Whether or not the modes of inheritance are the same, they're remarkably convergent for being not even colubrids. Yeah, that's a good point. That's cool. It is fun to see those examples. I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing some more thorny devils. We did get a thorny devil. Did you see one down in South Australia?

We tried. A week later, he sent me a photo of one because that's how it goes. But no, we didn't, unfortunately. We got one and that was pretty, pretty awesome. You know, I think that was Jordan's first Thorne DL. I'd seen him in Western Australia and I'd seen a few DORs in Alice Springs. Yeah, I've heard a lot of people see them that way where they're just so slow going across the road that like most people, they have they see a couple of DORs before they see a live one. And the ones I saw in Western Australia, we were going probably 60 miles an hour and I saw it on the road kind of like, wait, that was a thorny devil. Yeah. Flip around and get it off the road quick before a road train took it out.

You know, but I don't I don't think we saw any DORs in Western Australia, but and that's good, you know. So, yeah, maybe there's not enough people driving down there. That's the other beautiful thing about Western Australia is it's pretty, there's not many people out there. And so, yeah, it's pretty cool. I highly recommend it. Yeah. Rob, Rob almost made it over there. We were going to go on a trip out there, but then COVID came along and ruined that plan. So we got to reschedule that trip i think but yeah yeah too many cool places to see for sure but it's just it's too big of a country every time i try to rank the different places i

want to go to i'm like oh but the kimberly oh but you know i really want to you know being a monitor enthusiast i'm like i i've got to get up to the top end and then yeah oh but western australia oh but cape york like it's too many too many for sure well i think on this on this last trip in in darwin area and then over to western australia we got mitchell i mertens uh scolaris uh what else do we see we saw um i saw ocreatus uh flowered eye um yeah that's the yeah yeah yeah we missed that yeah we missed that i was really bummed out about that because we spent a lot of time looking for those things and just sitting in the same place staring at the same patch of rock yeah trying to recreate what had been seen two days in a row so what do you do and we we spent a lot of time in their habitat but

yeah i i saw tracks of one i'm pretty sure because it was right where a new a number of records were and i went through didn't see the tracks came back they were there and like yeah right right where records have been made we wanted to see them. They're so cryptic, aren't they? Yeah, they're just so shy and fast. Yeah, they do a good job of staying out of sight when you are around them. Well, even the one that Keith saw, I think he saw it for a grand total of about eight seconds across two days. Right. Yeah.

And even the difference between Mitchell Eye and the Scalaris, you know, at the spot where they co-occur, the Scolaris were very bold, relatively bold, you know, for sure. The Mitchell Eye were all incredibly wary. And that was almost a defining feature of is it a Scolaris or a Mitchell Eye? Yeah. How wary was it? Quick. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, one of my, you know, pretty high up on my list up in the Cape York Peninsula is I really want to see a Dorianus up there. And that's like a prime example of, you know. Yeah. Spend your weeks and you might get a glimpse of one, right? Yeah. I mean, I know people through the AHS who have spent a lot of time up there and never seen one. Yeah, I think I'd rather see one of those chlorostigma or whatever. Is that what they're called? The indicus type?

Yeah. Those are awesome looking. Yeah. The speckling on them is pretty unreal. Well, given Australian sort of politics and realities and things, my question, you you know if we went back 20 25 years my question was well do they actually exist there is that just to legitimize sort of the captive animals that they you know people sort of oh no no this is from you're right yeah that's what it and so that honestly clouds a lot of those questions and then even gets into well becari versus kipornai and you know these yeah you what you saw indications of a key porn eye

right we saw and you saw a dead one yeah i said dor and a live one i heard i heard kind of a scuttling on the side of the road and so i just kind of chased after that sound and then i saw it climbing up a tree and then it went to the opposite side of the tree so i i was trying to get a picture of it so i'm circling the tree trying to get a glimpse of it and uh my dad was there and he was on the road still and uh rico walder was with him too and and they were watching this thing go up and around you know corkscrew the tree so they got to see it several times but yeah a lot yeah not gonna see it uh very well i got glimpses of it you know as it as it ran away but yeah we got a really good look at

the dor he didn't yeah it was kind of sad to see you know somebody had hit such a cool little monitor but yeah neat speed and it was actually a lot bigger than i expected it was yeah kind of a um larger than i would have thought for a tree monitor. But yeah, very, uh, very interesting to like the diversity of the tree monitors to watching that, uh, video, uh, with, uh, oh my gosh, now it's gonna, gonna leave my head of course, as soon as I start talking about it, but the, on the trap talk network, the new monitor, Chris Haplin, Chris Haplin, Kyle, sorry, Chris, but yeah, he's, he's a cool guy um but um his his podcast is real i really enjoy listening to that i think i have to watch it on youtube though

right because he has a lot of visual as at least the one i was just listening to it was like all sort of references to these pictures i'm going well this kind of doesn't work as a not a great audio media yeah yeah yeah i think yeah the tree monitors are are kind of a really cool example of um i i think the green trees are there his argument that they kind of parallel the chondros and their um different lineages i i think that's that's pretty interesting and i mean it makes sense um i guess it's just hard with new guinea being the way it is. Yeah. Well, that brings up that, you know, the speaking of green tree pythons, you know, kind of the idea of island, you know, when they when they hit an oceanic island rather than just an offshoot or a peninsula that's underwater kind of thing. Yeah. You know, when do they start becoming another species or speciation yeah because of yeah exactly and that's that's probably where we have to like

evaluate it as a freeze time this snapshot in time because realistically that's where we are right like we we exist on such a miniscule time versus the you know the vast um time scale of evolution that like we kind of have to evaluate things as they are and not as they might be. Um, because otherwise we'd go crazy. Trying to speculate about, you know, is this, are these, I mean, not to bring it back to Kyanactus, but like there's, you know, there's two different species of Kyanactus and I don't buy it. I think there, I, I, the,

the paper that separated Anulata from Oxypitalis is, you know, I think that it could be. I think it's possible. I think that they didn't have enough data to support their argument. And the only geographical barrier is the San Bernardino Mountains. But there is gene flow.

There's gene flow through the Coachella Valley. So, you know, where do you draw that line? And I think this is an example of like, hey might be species one day but i don't think they are right now um yeah but yeah you're you're absolutely right as uh and a lot of them you know uh this is a pretty a pretty interesting um thing with monitors in indonesia is a lot of them have been split based off of trade specimens. Wolfgang Boma is like the guy who did all that. And there's been some, you know, a lot of what he's done has been valid, but there have also been specifically in the Kai Islands, there's a bit of like, this might not be the way it is because these trade specimens might not be what you think they

are. And there's some like type localities that are a bit iffy. And so, and there's a lot of cryptic diversity there, you know, the Indicus complex. So like, that's where it gets really confusing. Right.

Yeah. I lost track of that whole argument. That's, I think that's why my interest kind of stops when you get to Northern Australia. I just like, Oh yeah. Australia is such a mess oh

yeah yeah it's crazy it's cool though yeah it's oh yeah there's some neat stuff there i i'd definitely love to check that out someday but yeah maybe after i've exhausted my australia trips and i have a yeah right yeah right but yeah i wouldn't try and list or form serpent it would just be yeah no i mean i think there's been some argument that like Varanus finch eye might occur on Australia. And then there's, again, going down the rabbit hole, I've spoken to some people and they're like, yeah, it's a mess. Yeah. But it's definitely thought provoking. I guess in regards to that, you know, those green trees got to Biak somehow, and that, you know, giving you an example of an oceanic island.

And it is conceivable that maybe some raft back to the mainland and more raft from the mainland to New Guinea. So how often do you need interjections of, you know, that? Well, that's where it gets. Yeah. And that's, that's where i think the nuance comes in is a lot of a lot of people have this idea that you know if a species needs to be genetically isolated but like you know if if if like you say if you think that maybe diamonds are a separate thing from other carpet pythons they do interbreed with coastals. There is an intergrade zone. So is, is that the case or do they form a, do they form a natural climb? Like who, you know, yeah, it would be really nice to be able to see back in time to see what they did,

you know? Right. Well, and, and I guess that's, uh, the, the trick, you know, I, and, and I think it all comes down to the communication, right? If, you know, if you if I think there was some politics involved with why they didn't give Biaka a name or, you know, either a species or subspecies designation. But I mean, we should have obviously, you know, they might be the same species as the stuff on the mainland, but they're they're a different form. They're isolated. They're genetically on their own you know distinct evolutionary trajectory so you know they probably should be a different species or subspecies or whatever you want to call them but we should communicate that way you know like yeah right different thing so you know biogreen trees should probably have some kind of designation just so we can communicate and know what we're talking about, you know.

And that's what I've, you know, you hear a lot about certain people talking about how they named them as subspecies when really they should be their own species. And it's the case for more than just green pythons. But the it's it's definitely you're right like we need it we need it like a substrate to be able to talk about this um i don't know if that's the right word but you know what i'm you know what i'm saying a medium um to to talk about these things but i think that when you you know to point, bringing in like a political decision, that's where I think it takes the objectivity out of, out of taxonomy. Um, and it takes, you know, it, maybe it all stems back to the question of whether or not taxonomy is a science, because if it truly is a science, then, you know, you shouldn't be able to influence it

with policy or with, you know, potential conservation of, of certain populations, it should be an objective science. Um, and a lot of people are, will argue that it is a science. Um, but then some others will say it's too subjective. It's not, you know, you don't have a testable. I, or I'm not sure what the exact argument I heard was, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. And I, maybe we call it a soft science. I mentioned that my, my daughter's studying psychology and I'm like, Oh, you're in the soft sciences. And she's like, what? Don't say that. That's not, that's not nice. I'm like, no, it's not a dig at it. It's just, you know, it's not like, well, what does that mean? Yeah.

Yeah. Had a little fun discussion with her, but yeah. Sorry, Rob, you looked like you had something to say, but that's fine. No, I think you're great. I was just going to put, yeah, it's about, you know, what's the soft science? It's crafting and supporting an argument. Right. And people can have countervailing points and all those things. And it's just trying to, you know, persuade, right. Based on the evidence that you have. And I think that can, you know, that can, uh, speaking of the alternate localities, you know, as long as you know what they're talking about or why they're specifying a certain road junction in West Texas, you know, when they're talking about their gray bands, um, it just helps you communicate, you know, okay, I'm crazy. That's what you're communicating. But, you know, you're at least keeping things, you know, in the structure that you would like to see them in. And I think, you know, kudos to those people who kind of went to that effort and went to that level and has, you know, that specificity of, you know, that it's kind of cool. And I, and, you know, you go to different localities and you see maybe some nuanced looks and some different kinds of looks to them. And that's cool. I like that, you know, so why

shouldn't that be something that we get excited about and celebrate and give a little name to, you know? Yeah. Well, especially for the hobby, right? Like, you know, the hobby is, you know, some people, the alternative being the extreme example and maybe chondros being kind of the other end of the spectrum where people just kind of hybridize them together all willy nilly. It's it's you're right. I like it is cool. And don't get me wrong. I think it's up until recently, I thought that, you know, I thought that all of the the kind of actors north of the San Bernardino Mountains were didn't have red bands and all the ones south did have red bands. And that's, but then I have seen a bunch of pictures now from from the Anza Borurgo area of like some really weird looking annulata yeah um and so now i want some now i want to go find them um and so yeah i i think that's what draws a lot of a lot of people in right um and that's where i just think that like that's where i i i just kind of have it in my head where I can, I can compartmentalize my scientific taxonomic brain and my, my hobby, you know, forms brain. Um, yeah.

I think too, it just helps us to bide the time and tell, well, I don't know if we really do that very well in the hobby where, you know, like you said, like, look at the green tree pythons. It's just all willy nilly. Like let's try try to make this weird designer looking thing so we'll breed whatever to whatever to get that end result and that's fine i mean yeah it's freaks in boxes right there on a different evolutionary trajectory it doesn't matter what we breed them to in captivity we're not repopulating biak or whatever right and if you were you top repopulating biak you'd probably take specimens from near biak on the mainland like replicate what probably originally happened you know so i i don't know i think we get a little precious with it sometimes you know and uh that's fine

you know we want to kind of preserve and and i like to see something that's representative of the of its wild form or the wild type. So I can have Australia in my living room or something and not just have some mishmash of whatever, you know, I want to, I'm going to see the form that I saw in the wild. And sometimes that's really difficult because you know, like, I think Kimberly rock monitors a nice example of that too, where they probably had different forms,

different areas where they collected them from. Yeah, you're going where I was going. Yeah. I was going to say. Pilbarencis. Yeah. Well, that's, yes, exactly. We're all on the same topic where I was going to say, you know, in terms of hobby Pilbarencis in the United States, you know, a little bit of discourse right on the Pilbarencis versus Hamersliancis, you know,

as something that, oh, perceived to be a singular entity, right, at the initial time of coming in, and then are subsequently split. It's the green tree thing all over again. It's the Kimberly, you know, just saying, well, what did you actually have? What's over at Lucas's house, you know? Yeah, well, yeah. And I can say I have seen a lot of European animals that lean a lot more towards Hammersley ensis than some of the you know i and i i and and you know what we don't have with uh australian species that we do have with some of the indonesian species is locality information because they were obtained less than legally

yeah um and so it's really anybody's guess uh of what they really are um honestly you know this is actually a conversation i had with frisey that the maybe not the majority but a good chunk of the australian monitors we have in the u.s because there is kind of a black box of of information about where they came from they're probably hybrids you know story and could be with ocreatus uh glower die could be with those other glower die i got a pilbarencis that had blue in it and it was pretty clearly it had glower die in the mix so oh yeah oh weird well we know frank did that crossing a few times did he really yeah he he bred glower die to pilbarencis a few times i'm pretty sure i know he had some hybrids back in the day yeah yeah or even i mean

you could say i you know i could go on bushy and gill and i and and all the others that we didn't know were were different species and so i actually i can't remember where i heard it i it was either it was on it was on a podcast i can't remember if it was maybe dusty roads or Lasseter or one of the Calubrid, you know, one of the Southwest Calubrid people, um, we're talking about the motivation behind keeping localities pure isn't necessarily because you're right. Because as soon as it's out of the wild, it's on its own trajectory and, and it's no longer representative of what that wild population is.

But as long as you're keeping a locality pure, no matter what taxonomy does you know that what you have is what you have is what you have yeah and i can really yeah unless you collect from you know dale's gourd and then you know a little bit unless you're unless you're really getting on that that that uh razor's edge between yeah yeah the two different because i mean hammersley ensis and pilbara ensis are not separated by very far you know i think yeah no whole species within a day or two of each other right they were wasn't very far to go between their habitat so um you know i i guess we we try to do our best but sometimes we we don't hit the mark and for things like that where it's you

know black market and you know smoking right like that is yeah and and i mean i think a lot of that uh i mean you know you read stolen world and you see that uh you know um they use a pseudonym but we know who was over australian species and and probably where he was getting them he was either breeding them or collecting them locally or yeah something like well i mean i can tell you i i know people who did collect i know of people now who did collect those animals to be smuggled and it's like just it's it's yeah it's not a clarify i know of people i don't know them personally um but i know personally yeah one one of my friends got put in jail for a year yeah yeah yeah because he

was bringing stuff home to to fill in gaps that we we didn't have you know what i mean right to to make sure that we had the right you know species or we knew what we were talking about yeah yeah and and unfortunately they got confiscated and sent to the san diego zoo and i went there we went to see them in the zoo zoo and they were on display and they had all sorts of like a Gurney that were later a Gurney, a signetos depressa. Oh yeah. Yeah. And they had them all in the same tank. And like you had the signetos over here and the depress over here, they were like, like the warring gangs.

Man, they're beating each other up. the warring gangs and they're like yeah man they're beating each other up we don't know why they're so feisty like because you've got different species in the same cage you know before it was species i mean he recognized there were different forms and they were oh i mean one of them's red and one of them is gray like right yeah it's like yeah and that's a very good example of like, those, those are different. I mean, you don't need genetics to tell that those are different. Yeah. They're isolated. They're completely different in appearance. And, you know, it's like, and, and granted, I mean, hobbyists and herpers and herpetologists knew this for a long time, but again, it takes time to do that work. And so in the meantime, you know, the zoo's like, ah, they're all depressed. What are you making such a fuss about like come on guys yeah oh i mean even i mean yeah it is it is really interesting that that subspecific not in the context of subspecies but just like populate as a population level like and that's why you know you hear it get thrown around a lot you know for a while people were

saying oh i'm breeding it was it was a common thing to say, oh, I'm breeding this species for conservation. I'm keeping it alive in captivity. And then, and then it was kind of a trend to say, oh, well, that's not actually conservation. Those animals are never going back to the wild. And it kind of, it, it brings into question, yeah, like, where do you want to define the line of what is what is worthy of conservation and and in in all reality captive breeding or captive uh assurance colonies are like an absolute last resort of conservation like this is not it's not often successful it's not often a valid uh you know means of of repopulating the wild and so it's it's it's interesting to watch all that play out i guess and and different people's perceptions of what what conservation

really is right i i guess if you found out there was some weird guy in outback australia breeding thylacines together it'd probably be okay for using those for reintroduction. Sure. And that's what I mean. Right. Absolutely. But then if you've got one, you know, if you're, like, Biocs are still on Bioc. So there's no, you know, nobody would argue that we should start putting Aru's on Bioc. Like, that's preposterous, you know, or to the conservationists, it might be. Yeah. Well, if you put Aru's there well if you put arrows there then you're

mixing then you're gonna get some weird stuff that's for sure yeah yeah you get your we get all these designer who will get designer chondros in the wild yeah exactly the signal maybe that's somebody's dream yeah they all get picked up immediately exactly i know i just imagine imagine the sickness out there in the wild blending in with the undergrowth yeah right they become a different species just because they look so weird yeah yeah yeah but i mean you think of oh yeah go ahead no go ahead no after you oh i was just gonna say it makes me think of um me think of another convergent species, the basins, with, what is it, Corallis? What's the other species? It's not Caninus.

It's not Bates. No, it's the other one. It's the other one. The few pictures that are out there almost look like a designer condo if it was an emerald. I don't know. Maybe that's some weird hybrid between. I mean, it's probably its own thing, but maybe that's some weird hybrid between no i mean it's probably its own thing but maybe that's some weird hybrid between caninus and and bettisa and it's just and that's what happens could be weird we see hortulonus and you know yeah uh caninus for sure so like oh yeah

right yeah and that was what is that like gray and yeah a whole host of different things but they just don't survive really past a couple years it seems like you know they produce offspring but not fertile offspring and things but yeah people have tried but that seems to happen mostly i think at the sort of collection points rather than in the wild but that's not if it can happen right at a you know collection spot then you would think it could happen in the wild as well yeah well in that that club you know willard i yeah i haven't seen that that sounds trippy yeah they were thinking the snakes of arizona book oh gotcha

and they were thinking it was a different species at first yeah kind of crazy yeah i i can think of several examples of hybrids that have have been you know that's that's a whole other thing right like you know sometimes species that's a whole other thing right like you know sometimes species hybridize and actually do there is a new species that comes to that like think of darwin's finches into the classic example right um that's another one where where do you draw the line between a hybrid and a species that was born of two different species right or or ones that are adapting in a different niche to prey on a different insect or something. Right, exactly.

Different meal types. When do you call it, the different species? Is it just adapting to its environment? Obviously, there's genetics that go along with those changes. Identifying those genetic changes especially in darwin's time was impossible and yeah did we well there's a reason i haven't there's a reason i haven't looked into the the whole north american rat snake thing because i i'm i've had enough like it's just continental speciation is is is just a yeah it's something

something else. Right. And there's, there's really good examples in birds too, where they've split bird species that look pretty identical, but yeah, by, I think you were alluding to that with songs and things like that. Yeah. Um, similar things where they look the same and they've been, you know, identified for years as the same thing. But now we've recognized there are some differences that maybe warrant that split. And obviously some people disagree with that and some people are for and against it. And you're going to always have that. But as long as we know what we're talking about and we can use those labels, you know, whether it's like, I saw this here or, you know, locality type, you know, things or.

Right. Well, and to me with the birds, it's like, it's again, it's, it's we're using some other, some other feature as a proxy for, for, for genes. So if, if, you know, two different bird populations make two different songs and don't interbreed, but you know, they diverged 50 years ago, then, all right, that's, that's like two different people speaking two different languages, right? You know, we wouldn't argue that, that there's different species of human, like that's, that's, that would be preposterous. Um, but then, I mean, and this is why I kind of, I've had to rein myself in a little bit and like

view everything within the bubble of reptiles. Um again, stemming from the Squamates podcast, I almost went down the cichlid rabbit hole and like, what? A species can only be 600 years old and still be its own species. What? And I'm just like, Nope, got to shut that out. I can't, I can't devote that much brain power to that. Right. And while this whole conversation was making me think i was thinking of it in the context of geckos but it's other lizards as well right where you have uh species hybrids that then sexually uh reproductive species hybrids that then produce

um presengetically yeah which is super interesting right so they're sufficiently divergent to uh what disrupt meiosis yeah but they're still viable offspring and then produced asexually. Yeah, I mean, there's another feature. I mean, I have Lepidophyma, and the population that the lizards were collected from that are in the hobby are parthenogenic, but not all of them are. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Same with the binos, geckos. Yeah, exactly. Same with the binos. Same with, um, yeah. Or even, even, um, something my university is working with are, are, you know, those skinks that some of them are oviparous and some of them are ovoviviparous. Like it's's they're the

same species but right yeah it's for now you could you can really go down the rabbit hole of different different ways just split up things and yeah yeah for sure yeah i guess the bottom line as long as you know what i'm talking about and i know what you're talking about and we can kind of arrive at the same conclusion of the picture of what we're talking about, then I think we're good. And especially when, you know, yeah, we're not in, we're not in the crazy academic, like bickering over, you know, we're, we're just having fun. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's what takes the pressure off and lets us say, oh, this is garbage or this is, I like this or I hate it. It's a lot easier to be flippant right exactly yeah yeah yeah especially when you

have very little knowledge we've got absolutely for taxonomy yeah i know i'm going to my professor and asking him like half of the half of the the opinions i've come to have been like my he's not even a herp guy he's a paleontologist but he's like knows knows something about evolution and so i'm like hey is this is this valid like Like I show him, I just email him with, with different figures from papers I'm reading. Cause I'm like, I don't understand this. Is this, you know, is this true? And, you know, sometimes it's like, no, that's actually, that's not, that's not really a great way of doing things. And I'm like, Oh, well now I'm, you know, I'm, I'm kind of learning how to be critical. Yeah. Yeah. Get his opinion on that anturesia paper yeah unless he

was involved in writing it yeah no i don't he's a mammal guy so okay okay yeah because i i mean i talked to zach loafman about it and he's like oh yeah that was crayfish they'd be several different species you know yeah they wouldn't be right yeah yeah yeah yeah i should i should go back and look at that again because i'm now i'm curious because the picture in my head i have is like the children's and stims most of the children's and simpsons formed a clade and then the ones in the kimberly formed their own clade but i don't remember if that's or or there were three clades and i don't know i gotta go there were kind of four different like groupings but they said since we can't say that there's no genetic uh you know swapping there yeah we're just going

to sink them all into one and i'm like yeah that's the dumbest thing to do with that i mean obviously there's four different groupings yeah and maybe you know if they did if if if the divergence is such that they they form one relatively you know it maybe if it's a case of, well, if you do this, if we say these are different things, then all of a sudden we have to say, like, I don't know, for example, maybecies, right? Where it's like, you know, maybe subspecies can be a way to evaluate within species clusters independent of one another. And you don't have to rely, you don't have to make those concessions of saying, well, if this is a species, then this has to be a species. Right. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's the easy way out in some ways, but then at the same time, they went over and named all the different spotted pythons. Yeah, I know. I know.

That one's a weird one. You're very conflicted there. Yeah. Which I almost, I kind of like, this is where my own bias comes in. I kind of like the idea of there being a Poplin spotted python, but then also why isn't the Poplin carpet python different? Like, and that's, you know, theoretically they diverged at the same time. Well, right. Yeah.

Yeah. But how different? Species level? Yeah, exactly. know and they ironically they diverged at the same time well right yeah yeah yeah but but how different species level yeah exactly and then you have to be like okay how quickly does this evolve compared to this and it's like you know exactly the the evolution rate of an anole versus a tortoise is is vastly different and so you know and it's we're trying to answer questions that we just can't know. Yeah. I mean, you look at hominids and apes. Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, they're so close. But yeah, they're obviously different species, and the genetics are –

Yeah. I mean, in the public, like in the media, I can think of a recent example being with the whole green anaconda split. It's like 5% divergence between these two anacondas humans and chimpanzees are only two percent well this is crazy and it's you know the ill-informed you know like or i shouldn't say but like the layperson would think oh wow that that is crazy but you know they they when you dig a little deeper and you realize like anacondas just probably have been relatively the same for such a long time. And genetic drift has allowed them to have, you know, perceived within species diversity. And humans are just a very young species in in reference to that.

Yeah. Well, and geckos, I they're they're really good at finding cryptic diversity and geckos and naming gecko species like that happens about every week you know we were just talking about one of the papers that split up galliatus into three species and they're all yeah you know it's not too far from each other but you know they've got different portholes on the side of them. And the genetics are different. It can really do your head in once you really get down to it. Yeah. I just wish there was more consistency.

You have the same kind of... That's where on my head I'm like, should we... There's so many... Again, I go back to that. There's so many different uses for the subspecies rank. Should we just get rid of it altogether, you know, and just, just accept, you know, but it's, it's something I think about a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's the, the main thing is things are ill, um, structured, you know, there's no, there's no good definition of what a species is. I mean, there's lots of different definitions. There's lots of good definitions, but there's, yeah, but there's no definition of what a species is. I mean, there's lots of different definitions. There's lots of good definitions, but yeah. But there's no consensus on what definition we should necessarily use for reptiles or even between different groups of reptiles. And that's kind of what's frustrating, I think, to the layperson is we just want the labels we want.

Or at least the labels to agree with you know between groups and and that's yeah maybe we should just have like accepted common names like right like the bird people you know like it's just this is this this is yeah yeah so i don't know yeah half the time you don't even know what the the common name is you know you only know you only know the scientific name i was trying to think like you know and i wrote a book on the nephorus and like it's like wait what's what's what's uh shai again what's the same thing i was like like northern rough kimberly and i was like what am i gonna post it and then i was like oh i looked at yours it was like oh

northern rough knob okay fair enough i think i just defer to a rod or whatever that website just use the same names that they use or um i don't know i and i looked on inat and like they're they're they've sunk the stem sign to children i so they're calling them python's children beyond that so that's kind of sad to see that go yeah and it marks them all out as though you mislabeled it and yeah that's yeah one of the most irritating things about i know yeah records is it's like oh come on this i don't know that little feature i don't care for yeah i mean i think i just goes off of the reptile database right and it's you know they're not i it's a it's a monumental task to document every all of current

taxonomy and reptiles so it's you know i cut them a bit of slack there but you're absolutely right like that definitely is is can be a little bit frustrating and yeah um and especially you know like uh when you're trying to conserve like scientific literature history, you know, it brings up the argument of why Varanus are all still Varanus and not Euprepiosaurus and Samosaurus and Hapturosaurus and all the different, you know, and a lot of people argue that's just it's for the sake of, you know, literacy in the literature, if that's a thing you know yeah there was an interesting inet record that i was looking at the other day kind of going back and forth and it was uh an aspoditis but it had its head chewed off by a cat and so you just saw the banded pattern and it's within the range of womas but it's not it wouldn't necessarily be unexpected that a blackhead might venture just you know because it's like the southern southern most tip of the blackhead distribution so you're like yeah and it looked like a blackheaded pattern and then it's so i'm like nah that's a blackhead and then they said oh

it's a juvenile so oh well that changed you know they're a little darker juveniles you know the bands are darker when they're due oh maybe it is this woma but the well yeah look blackheaded bands you know it's kind of an interesting puzzle sometimes on yeah and it brings up yeah the aboriginal kid bringing it from you know up north and coming down and yeah i mean yeah you just ate half of it or something and threw out the other half because it got bad or i don't you know who knows yeah right no exactly and i think i think it was you know uh for anis rainer gunther i was was described for the type specimen was deformed but they just they but they used the deformed snout as a feature to describe it to say yeah it's got a bunch of yeah yeah but but it's nope, that was just that one individual. Like, yeah, it's it's I think it's born out of haste for describing things. And that's a bit of a broader scale than, say, the blackhead just trying to identify an individual.

But but you're right. It's like it's like a little bit of impatience. Yeah. Well, there was somebody, you know, in the morph game or whatever, the head for bottlenose or whatever. They had a really underdeveloped embryo, you know, that they cut open out of the egg and it was white and they're like hey i've got a white thing i'm like no you've got an embryo you don't have right exactly hasn't developed pigmentation yet you know and so we always laugh oh it's hit for bottle nose yeah right i know isn't it like that i saw some meme that was like comparing a fetus of a human to a dolphin. And it's like, you know, especially from where we're not experts. So it doesn't matter. We can have fun with it and talk about different things. And, you know, and, and I think that's part of the fun of was like this guy was talking about species that he has that he's keeping in captivity. And they said, oh, where does that come from? And he's like, oh, I don't know.

You're like, it was a rare gecko. Like, you know, not many people have these. And you're like, you didn't even, you know, you don't even remember where it's from. Like, it's got a very small range and it's very specific for this one area you know you're like yeah come on do better you know like let's uh let's let's look at the wild the things a little well that's the classic like yeah the ball python is from africa right you know yeah it's it's yep you're right it is but you know how that's that's the um that's the little whatever i'm i don't know what i'm trying to say the note card version of it but right but yeah yeah what if you just gave that information

and they went to africa and found a python then all of a sudden an engulfed python small python yeah i i think that's just the you know the get out there and herp kind of thing you know yeah oh yeah stuff in the wild like experience it how it should be not just in a deli cup you know like yeah yeah i i i have to so i haven't herping is very a very new thing for me uh for the longest time i wasn't into herping and then when i didn't get a job this summer, I was like, Oh, well, I guess it's time to herp. And so I've, I've been, you know, and then that coincided with me getting into photography a bit. And so now I'm trying to tick off as many salamanders of California as I can. Yeah. Um, and I, I totally, it is, I arguably more rewarding to find that target species than

it is to like, I don't get a get a new animal uh for me at least maybe i haven't hatched out much stuff so maybe that can contend uh with with finding that rare target species but you know finding my first dicamtodon uh giant salamander yeah like just you know a trail that i had walked thousands of times in my life but just had never been there in the right conditions and all of a sudden there's a pool off the side of the trail and it's just like a foot long salamander like yeah did you let it bite you it was very placid i have to say um not nearly as aggressive as some of the arboreal salamanders i've caught yeah don't they have pretty good um teeth on them

they're they i've never heard of somebody getting it getting really bit by a uh die camp but the the famous photo is of an arboreal salamander with its teeth um and then if you if you if you find the photo that's cropped it's just the it's kind of the smiley salamander and then you find the photo that's cropped, it's kind of the smiley salamander. And then you find it uncropped and there's a bloody finger above it. That's awesome. They're super cool. Yeah. I don't know my salamanders as well as I probably should. But I've seen all the salamanders in Utah.

I've found all the salamanders in Utah. All the ones. All the ones. One or two. Yeah. All the ones. Tiger salamander. I guess there's kind of two forms but i don't know yeah you're all marveritum so yeah yeah all right well thanks so much for coming on

this has been a really fun discussion and you brought some really great points out so really appreciate your viewpoint and thanks for being here. Uh, where can people find you? What's where are you posting your cool photography and salamander finds? Uh, yeah. Um, mostly just Instagram. Um, I'm just all lowercase nick.p.vine. Um, but I'm like the plant and, um, yeah, I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just getting into this whole world so nice i'm not yeah yeah i think this i mean i can say the same thing like i i've just gotten into herping maybe in the last decade or so you know like seriously like i mean i was always kind of an outdoorsy kid always looking for snakes and lizards and stuff but it wasn't like i was on targeted herping trips you know i was just backpacking and oh there's a lizard i'm gonna go chase it or here's a snake you know can i bring it home yeah exactly here's a baby con color that i stepped

over because it didn't have a rattle and my dad oh my god can i my dad found a zanata one time and he was it was a hike i chose not to go on i stayed back at the campsite and then he comes back and shows me a video he's like hey i found this cool snake and it's a zanata and at the time i didn't even know what it was and but then looking back i'm like okay a tricolor snake in the sierras all right right yeah my dad had a picture from the fifth 60s um of him holding a tricolor and so yeah it was kind of cool like where'd you find it and then kind of identifying it as a utah mountain king snake and yeah they're pretty neat so and it was like kind of a northern extent of their range so he found it pretty pretty high oh wow yeah utah so that's

kind of fun yeah so i'm um i'm i'm just finishing up a field guide to the reptiles and amphibians of utah so i'm going to include that picture in the book somewhere that's cool yeah kind of for the historical perspective you know my dad found one before i did but i wasn't born yet right yeah um but yeah we have some fun stories of herping together and stuff so i think it's worse off that nipper found one before he did right yeah right coming from over overseas yeah well see now this is this comes back to my roots as a desert rat like i wasn't i wasn't you know thinking about mountains as cool places to look for reptiles so i think i've kind of shot myself in the foot i still am not sure if i found a green snake in reality or if that was a dream i had, because I have this distinct memory of finding this green snake in a

tree, you know, in the mountains somewhere on a trip when I was a kid and my dad wasn't around, you know, I was just out wandering somewhere. And then I, it, I saw it and then it moved and then I couldn't see it anymore. And I'm like, oh crap, where'd it go? And I'm all looking through this tree. So did i dream that did i see it i didn't get a picture so if there's no picture it didn't happen yeah speaking of where do you post your fine you don't post them they didn't happen right yeah so yeah well that's cool yeah well i'll have to i i don't know if we're uh if i'm following you on there or not i'll have to rectify that yeah yeah i usually tend only to follow people who post wild reptiles and if it's

captive. I know I've kind of found myself skewing that way lately too. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So yeah, not good times, but I don't know. Usually we end kind of talking about anything cool we've seen in herpetology, any kind of interesting new publications or podcasts you've heard or interesting new information. I was listening to a podcast, Somebody Keeps Naltinus, and they came on the podcast. I heard that one. Bob recommended that one. So yeah, that was pretty cool. And I went down, listened to a few episodes

on that one and a few others, but yeah, so that's, that was kind of cool to hear about. And there's some others out there that have them, but just since they don't have very many babies very often, like they're just not out there. Not super public. Yeah. And if anybody puts it out there, then I'm sure they're just getting mobbed. Like put me on your list. I want some of yeah right yeah so i will never have a list yeah it's basically the answer yeah yeah good answer yeah so i don't know you guys got anything else cool that you've seen recently or yeah that i can think of i mean there's always cool stuff yeah absolutely you know the thing i was gonna say last week but i felt it was too cheesy was that episode with jordan really was was really filling you know on my oh yeah he's

doing the the maps associated with craig trumbauer's pitch yeah yeah and so yeah super excited for that um yeah absolutely there was a ton of stuff yeah i could tell you were digging digging that conversation after the podcast last week. Jordan's talking and Rob's just like got this big grin, you know, wide-eyed like, oh, this is what I want to hear. I'm really looking forward to listening to that because he hasn't done any podcasts, has he? Yeah, I think I kind of, yeah, talked him into it. But yeah, it was really nice to come on and talk with us about it. And I just wanted to have an excuse to hear his stories from his latest trip. Because, yeah, it's somebody who's so passionate about like about herping.

Like, you know, sitting at IHS, seeing the seeing the photos of the speckled rattlesnakes. It's like it's just he's seen some crazy stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to that, that episode. Yeah. I I've always kind of talked him up. And so Rob was like, finally I get to meet this guy and keep talking up. And then he's like, okay, you delivered here. You're the real deal. He wasn't just hyping you. It's it's real deal. So yeah, but good times.

Yeah, I guess that'll do it so thank you for coming on and thanks everybody for listening and we'll catch you next week for another episode of reptile fight club