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Posted by Byron Larkin on July 14, 2002 at 13:57:30:
In Reply to: Re: Back to you, Sir posted by David L. Martin on July 13, 2002 at 13:04:31:
I really hate to keep bringing-up the fact that faulty assumptions almost always produce flawed conclusions, but it is absolutely fundamental to this entire discussion. Your “shopping list” of possible explanations for why WDBs in south Texas appear to reach a larger size, on average, than EDBs in south Florida, would be valid only if we were talking about the same species, with the same natural history, and so-on. We are not. As such, any conclusions that are drawn from these sorts of exercises are not very useful, unless you are prepared to say that these two species are identical in all respects, and the taxonomists are wrong. Clearly, atrox and adamanteus are closely related, but I would submit that their similarities and evolutionary trajectories are not so close as to permit a meaningful “apples to apples” comparison of the sort you have been attempting since we started this enlightening discussion. This is essentially the same objection that I raised in an earlier post concerning your road-count comparisons between Texas and Florida.
While no one knows precisely when, where, why, or the sequence that these two species split from the family tree, along with viridis, ruber, exsul, and tortugensis, which are all apparently closely related in terms of morphology, scalation, and venom proteins, it was certainly many thousands of years ago. In any event, we all know that these two species continued to diverge along different vectors, shaped by very different bioenvironmental factors. As such, despite their superficial resemblance, they are quite different in many respects. And, it is the differences, as subtle as some of them may be, that make meaningful, valid comparisons between such things as growth rates, maximum lengths, and mortality rates so difficult. We have been discussing a very complex series of issues, and there are absolutely no simple answers. There is just no possible way to distill this thing down to a few “one liners”. If it were, this would be over, and I’d have to go back to selling cars.
