Ventral clipping (2) . 



Woodbury (1951) was the first to use ventral scales. He 

 clipped a portion of the ventral scale on either side, designating 

 the right side with a capital letter and the left side with a^pmall 

 letter. Scales were lettered craniad from the anal plate, ana sex 

 was indicated by M or F. Thus a code combination of "DaM" referred 

 to a male snake with a clipped fourth ventral on the right and the 

 first ventral on the left. 



Brown and Parker (1976b) modified Woodbury's methodology to 

 fulfill the eight criteria of Lewke and Stroud (1974) for a good 

 marking method. The modified method is claimed to be satisfactory 

 for at least four years and was used by Brown (1973), Brown and 

 Parker (1974; 1982), Henderson et al. (1980), Jacob and Painter 

 (1980) and Parker and Brown (1973; 1974a-b) . The Brown and Parker 

 protocol remove half of a ventral in combination of one to three 

 clips with a total of 989 unique combinations. Ventrals are counted 

 anteriorly from the anal plate on the left side in units from 1- 

 9; on the right side they are counted in series of 10 ' s (10-90), 

 100' s (100-900) , and 1000 's (if necessary) . A snake whose belly was 

 clipped on the left side of ventral nine and the right side of 

 ventral three and eleven would be number 239. Regeneration does not 

 appear to occur as readily in the ventrals as in the subcaudals. 

 No ill effects were noticed in markings of more than 1000 Coluber 

 constrictor (Brown, 1973) . This methodology appears superior for 

 scale-clipping, although some ambiguity may occur such as 

 misidentif ication of individual marks (Fitch, 1987) . 



Ventral and subcaudal clipping (3) . 



Fitch (1958, 1960) proposed a combination of subcaudals and 

 ventral scale clippings. The first twenty subcaudals allow 362 

 unique combinations. A typical code of "U 5L 2R" represents 

 markings on the fifth left and the second right subcaudals. 

 Ventrals are used to indicate the next series of 362 marks. 

 Counting craniad from the anal plate, "G 1L" designates the first 

 ventral on the left or "G 1R" the first right ventral, etc. Fitch 

 employed this technique in his later studies (1963a, b; 1965; 1975; 

 1982), and it was also used by Clark (1970) and Piatt (1969). 



Another variant of scale clipping was devised by Clark (1971) . 

 Only two marks are necessary with the designation of a basal 

 starting point. For example, "BL-2L 3R" indicated a base mark on 

 the left and the subsequent ventrals second left and third right 

 are marked. To improve reliability, a scale is removed from the 

 first dorsal scale row immediately adjacent to the basal marked 

 ventral . 



