greentrees
Good questions (and hopefully your head won’t get bitten off for some of them)! I just had a discussion on the phone with Chuck Oldham who observed dbts in the wild and breeds very white dbts in Arizona about some of these questions, especially asking how something that white could survive predation in the wild (similar to the arguments against albinos surviving in the wild). Chuck told me that much of the day, dbts are in this mucky muddy mess that you wouldn’t want to attempt walking in. And he has pulled out dbts that he had no idea how white they were til he got them back to some place where he could wash all that muck thoroughly off. I’ve talked with some of the researchers who are attempting to map the turtles’ genes and relationships, and they originally placed common map turtles (Graptemys geographica) further from all the other Graptemys than the other Graptemys were to dbts (Malaclemys). Further research has shown all the Geographicas closer related to each other than to Malaclemys, but still the two groups being very closely related. In my pond, I have a number of groups of different species of Graptemys mixed with my dbts, and the Graptemys have never hybridized, in fact, the only hybrid I’ve ever produced was (I believe) a dbt crossed with a (I believe Ouachita) map turtle. It makes sense that they might be closely related in the fact the dbts are all along the coast that the rivers that map turtles mostly occur in empty into. Another thing that Chuck mentioned to me was that he found the whiter color to be recessive to the darker. I don’t think they would be considered hybrids unless they were different species being crossed (correct me if I’m wrong). It would be interesting if we could find out how much dumping and mixing of the different subspecies or races actually already has occurred. -Rick Van Dyke Todd Stockwell wrote: