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Amateur question

Posted: March 6th, 2012, 3:10 pm
by JxT
I know this is amateur. Is there any visual technique to help differ between Crotalus oreganus helleri and Crotalus oreganus oreganus? I just recently moved and where I'm located I can't seem to pin point whose range I fall into or if I fall in the inter graded area. All research I've tried doing doesn't seem to come up with a clear answer. So for the upcoming months if I run into an oreganus in my new neck of the woods, I would like to be able to know whether it's oreganus oreganus or oreganus helleri. Thanks for any help!

Re: Amateur question

Posted: March 6th, 2012, 5:06 pm
by Fundad
sub species can only be identified by location..

Fundad

Re: Amateur question

Posted: March 6th, 2012, 8:23 pm
by reako45
I'm glad Fundad said that. That's what I was thinking, but I didn't want to give wrong info. Comin' from him it's pretty much gospel. Check range maps for both Crotes. I haven't looked @ range maps for either in a while so now, I'm wondering if there's an area where their respective ranges overlap.

reako45

Re: Amateur question

Posted: March 6th, 2012, 8:46 pm
by Mike Waters
South of the 138 is helleri north of the 58 is oreganus.

Re: Amateur question

Posted: March 6th, 2012, 9:38 pm
by JxT
I appreciate this. Thanks for the knowledge haha. I think I might fall in the overlap area.

Re: Amateur question

Posted: March 6th, 2012, 9:41 pm
by JxT
Yeah I've looked at a couple different range maps. It just seems a bit hard to pin point where locations are on them. From what I can tell there's an overlap. But I'm no expert so I can definitely be wrong.
reako45 wrote:I'm glad Fundad said that. That's what I was thinking, but I didn't want to give wrong info. Comin' from him it's pretty much gospel. Check range maps for both Crotes. I haven't looked @ range maps for either in a while so now, I'm wondering if there's an area where their respective ranges overlap.

reako45

Re: Amateur question

Posted: March 7th, 2012, 6:26 am
by Robert Hansen
JxT wrote:I appreciate this. Thanks for the knowledge haha. I think I might fall in the overlap area.
Where are you located? Snakes that are morphologically helleri extend as far north as the Lebec/Gorman/Frazier Park area in southern Kern Co., while snakes occurring north of there (at least those I've seen on the northern slopes of the Tehachapis) are oreganus phenotypes.

Cheers,

BH