Guyana/Suriname?

[mhartmann]

I read this interesting set of corespondence from a person in the pet trade living in Guyana. Supposedly, Guyana closed boarders for the pet trade in the last decade, and there is no exportation of boas. Suriname is still open. But because these countries are really close to each other and easy to pass to and from, a lot of people in the snake trade just crossed over to Suriname with their farms of Guyana boas and sold them as Suriname. Now at this point, there is little clear difference between Guyana and Suriname Boas and there is a large amount of variation in each locality.

What do you all know about the political climate, or the morphological differences between these two localities? I'm really interested just for the heck of it, but is there any hard fast way to tell if a boa is Guyana or Suriname?

[phillipswildbill]

Very interesting question, I've wondered that myself. I'm hoping for some feed back. I didn't know that about Guyana, from what your saying that would make any new imports suspect. I guess DNA would be different, I just don't know.

[billw]

Country "A" reaches it's export limit for they yr, while it's neighboring country (country "B") might have a higher number of animals it's permitted to export.
Animals collected in country "A" get exported out of country "B". It's been going on for yrs.
As far as DNA analysis, I would expect Suriname and Guyanan boas to be identical under the microscope. But in order to make that comparison, you would need specimens that are KNOWN to be from said locales in order to compare the two, and any other specimens that might be in question.
Unless you collect them yourself or are lucky enough to have a trusted contact in country, it's very difficult to be sure of the true origins of imported specimens.
Brazil has been closed for exportation for yrs. Yet there are boas that are collected from "extreme southern Suriname" that lack the pink and purple pastels commonly asociated with Suriname and Guyana boas. Instead they tend to have darker, more contrasting markings, more indicative of N Brazilian boas. Are they Suriname boas? Maybe. Then again, maybe not.