Coasties and Mountain garters I believe are the same thing. I suspect the coast subspecies will be invalidated.
If taxonomy is a hypothesis of the relationship between different groups of animals in the biological tree of life, then morphological differences alone are not enough to indicate different taxonomy.
But anyway, back to Sierra garters, this is what their bellies look like at the far north end of their range (Shasta County):
I understand it is quite different than further south in the Sierra's.
New Garter subspecies??
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