Pituophis catenifer
(Blainville, 1835) · speciesAt a glance
Sources9 archives
Databases and archives Pituophis catenifer's data was compiled from.
WikipediaWikimedia Foundation9 languages↗
BioWikiNetmultilingual Wikipediamultilingual↗
GBIFGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility25 790 records↗
ENAEuropean Nucleotide Archive · EMBL-EBI67 eDNA detections↗
BOLD SystemsCentre for Biodiversity Genomics11 specimens↗
Open Tree of LifeOpenTreephylogeny backbone↗
NCBIUS National Library of Medicinegenome & karyotype↗
WikidataWikimedia Foundationstructured facts↗
GLoBIGlobal Biotic Interactionsbiotic interactions↗Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
Pituophis catenifer deserticola, commonly known by its standardized English name since the 1950s, the Great Basin gophersnake,Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert. 1956. Common names for North American amphibians and reptiles. Copeia 1956: 172–185. (page 183)Crother, B. I. (ed.). 2017. Scientific and Standard English Names of Amphibians and Reptiles of North America North of Mexico, with Comments Regarding Confidence in Our Understanding. SSAR Herpetological Circular 43, 1–102 pp. [see page 74]Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles: Checklist of the Standard English Names of Amphibians & Reptiles (accessed May 15, 2022) is a subspecies of nonvenomous colubrid ranging in parts of western United States and adjacent southwestern Canada.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
Size & morphology1
Life cycle & reproduction4
A DNA barcode is a short, standardised stretch of genes that works like a fingerprint — enough to tell one species from another. Below is the molecular trace Pituophis catenifer has left across the world's sequence archives.
At a glance
★ the standard DNA barcode for this group — the short region actually read to tell this species apart. The rest are extra genes sequenced along the way.
The complete instruction manual Pituophis catenifer carries — its genome. We read it from three angles — how big it is, how the DNA is packed into chromosomes, and how completely it has been sequenced — and explain how to read each value as you go.
Genome sizehow big the whole instruction manual is
Measured in base pairs (bp) — the individual letters of DNA (human ≈ 3.2 Gb, a bacterium a few million). The chart places this genome on a logarithmic scale — each step to the right is ten times bigger — among reference organisms. Across species a bigger genome loosely tracks with larger cells, slower growth and lower-energy lifestyles (powered flight favours small genomes) — yet it does not imply more genes or a more advanced organism (the long-standing C-value paradox).
Sequencing statusassembly quality — how far to trust these numbers
Assembly level tells you how finished the sequence is — from fragmented contigs, through scaffolds, up to a full chromosome-level assembly. BUSCO % estimates completeness: the share of genes expected to be present that were actually found. These describe the data quality, not the organism.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The orange marker is the DNA clock: DNA accumulates mutations at a roughly steady rate, so comparing this species' DNA with its relatives estimates when the lineage split off — independently of any fossil.
Record type25 790 records
Origin
Range
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Cultivated / Captivenot free-living
A living individual in a botanical garden, zoo or nursery — cultivated or kept, not free-living.
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Holding institutions31 of 55 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
| Institution | Specimens |
|---|---|
| Berkeley, US | 1 528 |
| San Diego, US | 1 093 |
| München, DE | 792 |
| Los Angeles, US | 772 |
| EL PASO, US | 471 |
| ASUlocation not on record | 397 |
| Washington, US | 371 |
| Fort Hays State University, Sternberg Museumlocation not on record | 289 |
| Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural Historylocation not on record | 266 |
| Wuzhou, CN | 201 |
| Texas Memorial Museum, Texas Natural History Collectionlocation not on record | 188 |
| Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collectionlocation not on record | 136 |
| University of Nevada, Museum of Biologylocation not on record | 102 |
| Tacoma, US | 98 |
| Provo, US | 86 |
| University of Nebraska State Museumlocation not on record | 79 |
| University of California Los Angeleslocation not on record | 42 |
| University of Texas at Arlingtonlocation not on record | 33 |
| 32 | |
| Tlalnepantla, MX | 32 |
| Zacatecas, MX | 29 |
| New Haven, US | 25 |
| Oregon State Universitylocation not on record | 21 |
| Seattle, US | 21 |
| San Francisco, US | 19 |
| North Carolina Museum of Natural Scienceslocation not on record | 19 |
| Chicago, US | 17 |
| Ann Arbor, US | 16 |
| Cambridge, US | 15 |
| Universidad Católica de Manizaleslocation not on record | 14 |
| UCOCVlocation not on record | 13 |
| ASNHClocation not on record | 12 |
| CCBERlocation not on record | 11 |
| Ciudad de México, MX | 9 |
| Ensenada, MX | 9 |
| Mexico City, MX | 7 |
| Southeastern Louisiana University, Vertebrate Museumlocation not on record | 6 |
| Florida Museum of Natural History- Zoology, Paleontology & Paleobotanylocation not on record | 6 |
| Ithaca, US | 6 |
| APSUlocation not on record | 5 |
| UBCBBMlocation not on record | 4 |
| Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Surlocation not on record | 4 |
| Champaign, US | 3 |
| New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Sciencelocation not on record | 3 |
| Louisiana State University, Museum of Zoologylocation not on record | 2 |
| 2 | |
| Ciudad de México, MX | 2 |
| Denver, US | 2 |
| Staatliches Museum fuer Naturkunde Karlsruhe (State Museum of Natural History)location not on record | 1 |
| San Luis Potosí, MX | 1 |
| Saint John, CA | 1 |
| Natural History Museum of Utahlocation not on record | 1 |
| Ciudad Juárez, MX | 1 |
| Toronto, CA | 1 |
| San Nicolás de los Garza, MX | 1 |
Cultivated / Captivenot free-living
A living individual in a botanical garden, zoo or nursery — cultivated or kept, not free-living.
Where the DNA of Pituophis catenifer was picked up in samples of water, soil or air — nobody saw the organism, only its DNA left behind. A trace is a clue that the species was near, not a confirmed sighting.
Signal
Where its DNA was found
How strong is each trace?
Modelled climatemodelled
How to read this: each dot is one detection of this species' DNA in an environmental sample. The confidence meter weighs how many independent studies and places back up the signal — one detection in one study is a hint; many across several studies is solid. Records dated before 2008 (when eDNA methods began) are treated as likely mislabeled and left off the map.