The snake that never was

​Lampropeltis zonata algama is truly a desirable snake. Brian Hubbs seems to sum things up well when he writes, “Probably the most well known among hobbyists of all the California Mountain Kingsnakes, the Baja California Mountain Kingsnake is highly variable and viewed as a prize in many collections.” Most well known, and a prize indeed.

But, similarly to the (sometimes-denied) fact that you can’t know something that isn’t true, I submit that this snake can’t be the most well known since, inconveniently, it doesn’t exist — and what’s more, never has.

Hubbs gives credit for the description of Lampropeltis zonata algama to Van Denburgh and Slevin’s 1923 collection and publication, in which they called the snake Lampropeltis algama.  It was Klauber who, in 1943, described this snake as a subspecies:  Lampropeltis zonata algama.

All well and good, except that neither name was never accepted into biological taxonomy.  Neither Lampropeltis zonata algama nor Lampropeltis algama are synonyms of any current species.  The names were never used.  

The current name of this and all mountain kingsnakes in California and Baja California is Lampropeltis zonata.  For less than ten years, on the authority of Crother, et. al.,  the snake that hobby keepers like to call algama was officially Lampropeltis multifasciata, but as of 2025 is back to good old Lampropeltis zonata.

None of this is to say that the taxon isn’t distinct.  The red head of this variety is a giveaway, and keeping local variants pure in captive collections has a lot of value.  Keeping ‘algama’ as a common name for this variety is a useful practice.  But it isn’t a distinct species, nor a subspecies, and never was.



Crother, Brian I., Ronald M. Bonett, Jeff Boundy, Frank T. Burbrink, et al. / Moriarty, John J., ed. 2017.   Scientific and Standard English Names of Amphibians and Reptiles of North America North of Mexico, with Comments Regarding Confidence in Our Understanding, Eighth Ed.   Herpetological Circular, no. 43.

Hubbs, Brian, 2004.  Mountain Kings.

www.itis.gov

Klauber, Laurence, 1943.   Transactions of the San Diego Society of Natural History  Vol. X, No. 6, pp. 75-82 December 30, 1943 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/

https://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/Lampropeltis/zonata

Van Denburgh, John, and Slevin, Joseph R., 1923 , Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Series 4, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1-2. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/98588#page/340/mode/1up