This is a request to update rosy boa category to current (since 2008) taxonomy as listed in the ITIS database. Please list both species of rosy boa, Lichanura trivirgata and Lichanura orcutti. Subsequently, please ensure that animals that are hybrids of those two species are advertised only in the ‘other boas’ category, as required by MorphMarket’s rule # 3.2.e.
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Regulation of the way hybrids are posted on the marketplace has certainly been rather inconsistent as evidenced in this thread.
Require certain interspecies hybrid colubrids be listed in the “Other Colubrids”
I’m on the team that they either need to be in the appropriate other category or that hybrid categories should be created.
One issue I can think of that would be hard to regulate though is certain morphs that originated from hybrids and are now mainstays in a certain “species” to the point that a large portion of keepers/breeders don’t even realize their snake with that morph is technically a hybrid. Think scaleless corn snakes.
Another problem that comes to mind is when science decides to split a “species” that has been in the hobby for years and years into multiple species. Are all of those snakes in that category now hybrids?
I can’t think of it being as big an issue, but yet another complication could be when science decides to lump many “species” that have been in the hobby into one species.
Regardless I do hope that the marketplace puts forth more effort in regulating blatant hybrids from being posted in species specific categories.
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Figured I’d chime in since my thread was linked to this one. After discussing this issue previously with folks including some of the staff here, I’ve come to realize it’s a big ask and not easily implemented. Not necessarily the taxonomy update, that can be done, but to then have all “hybrids” that weren’t previously hybrids moved to another category gets to be a bit complex. I’m of the mind that something like a, “Rosy Boa Hybrids” category should be added like Thomas had mentioned in my thread, as the “Other Boas” section should be reserved for just that, other boas that don’t have their own category already.
As @scissortailscales mentioned, there are several issues that crop up. The Scaleless example in corn snakes is one. Much of the hobby no longer considers Scaleless or Ultra hybrids, as they’ve been pretty thoroughly mixed into the corn snake breeding population. That doesn’t mean they’re not, but where do you draw the line on listings when they’re so heavily integrated? It seems there are morphs in Rosy boas, so is there a way to differentiate which species they originated in, or are all color variants now hybrids as well?
With many hobby species, due to taxonomic changes, similarities in species, misidentifications, etc, they are no longer “pure”. Unless something can be traced directly back to wild caught on all fronts, you’ll never really know if it’s a hybrid or not. I took a look at the range of both rosy boa species and it looks like there is overlap, which means wild hybridization is not out of the question, either.
I’m also going to highlight this point:
Believe it or not, the lumping of species is just as much of an issue as the splitting. Look at Milk Snakes, for example. If they were to be listed according to the ITIS taxonomy, most of those categories would suddenly be lumped into just a few. Jalisco, Conant’s, Pueblan, Nelson’s, Sinaloan, and Smith’s are all technically just Atlantic Central Americans, Lamperopeltis polyzona. The issue is getting the hobby itself to accept these changes, and some people are very resistant to it.
I’ll tag @eaglereptiles as this is more his wheelhouse and he’d have a better answer for you.
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[quote=“noodlehaus, post:3, topic:53149”]
I’m of the mind that something like a, “Rosy Boa Hybrids” category should be added like Thomas had mentioned in my thread, as the “Other Boas” section should be reserved for just that, other boas that don’t have their own category already.
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Well, according to MM rules, hybrids go in the ‘most relevant other’ category.
Creating a specific category for hybrids normalizes them in a way that I personally don’t think should be done, and it would also necessitate a look to how a rule change would affect other categories (is a specific hybrid category for literally every possibility really the best way?).
Yes, this is all known and normally tracked (of course there are questionable ID snakes, but that’s a different issue). Species like rosies in which locales are of primary importance are better in this regard than species that are all morphed out.
Yep, this is another category that IMO could use a correction/update. The hobby categories can (and should) stay, within the valid species
Species delineation is something else, and there are hobby-relevant reasons they should be known and believed, such as the fact that state possession laws (tend to; the specific legislative text is important) are written per species, not per hobby category.
Yeah, that’s a weird case. There might actually be some sort of reasoning on what generation counts as a hybrid that could at least inform this discussion. I personally think scaleless are hybrids, as are hets and possible hets, but I’m not sure how many generations out I’d count to drop the hybrid designation. One way out is to assume that all corns are hybrids unless proven otherwise by lineage, and one way to denote this would be to drop the species name correspondence with hobby corns (as with plant varieties, perhaps).
Well, that could be said about quite a few species. There’s no question whatsover a whitewater x ajo is a hybrid. Any hobby locales that are on the species border could be assumed to be a grey area without asserting that this holds of all rosy boas; baby… bathwater.
I guess my original point was that listing the two actual valid species would be a good idea. That in itself would be a step forward.
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I missed responding to this before. My answer is ‘yes’, since that’s what a hybrid is – it just wasn’t known when it was bred (not all hybrids are intentional). This is a reason for keeping locales and lines pure – relevant to rosy boas (since some rosies that are now hybrids may well have been intergrades or mere locale crosses when they were bred 20 years ago), and probably some other herps (dart frogs, for sure, some of which are in some pretty substantial taxonomic flux). I’m not aware of any taxonomic changes that would have undermined the status of locale or lineage animals (maybe there is an example; would be cool to know about). So this is also a reason to preserve and use (in addition to valid taxonomic categories) those more finely grained hobby population designations as well.
Note that ‘lineage’ in this context refers back to the keeper (and sometimes import year) associated with the original captive stock of the particular population, not to some breeder whose hands the animal passed through and was selectively bred by.
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