Individual Adder ID

OK my original example reworked.. with some different numbers

This one threw me a bit, I had a lot of trouble deciding which scales belonged in group 3 and group 2. I used the logic that the ones marked in red (group 3) qualified by either

a) They were directly adjacent to the frontal (group4), or

b) They were directly adjacent to group 5 or group 6

If anyone knows Paul Benson and could direct him towards this thread. I think we would all be forever grateful.

Steve, I've taken a look at Benson's paper again. It appears to give two examples for the method of coding the scale groups, though it also appears one of these is spurious.

Taking the one good example I've produced the following Figure, (named After Benson as though it is a complete rework of the given information I don't want to run into a copyright issue)

My next step is to recode my original example following this, then I'll have another go at 'Biggie'. At least I now know why I was confused by group 5 and group 6.

It seems at this stage that it is more important to define the numbered groups by their ease of grouping from a dorsal head photograph, than worry too much about nomenclature for individual shields or scales.

I think if we could produce a dozen or so standard reference figures like the one above it will all start to get a lot easier.

this webPage looks familiar , and could help some.

http://www.onewildworld.co.uk/reptiles/viperaberus.htm

Hi Steve, you know I was just contemplating this, it would be really useful to exchange some examples and try and work out the labelling.

Follow the link in my first post if you haven't yet seen Bensons' examples, which will shed some light. 

I think I'm going to need to do a bit research regarding the naming of head scales, before I can group them. I'm sure I've labelled my diagram wrongly, the top "2" looks OK as an internasal, the other "2"s look like they should have been labelled as prefrontals and therefore should have been "3"s - group 6 I haven't a clue what you would classify them as.

The only reference I have at the moment is Smith, The British Reptiles and Amphibians, where scalation of a grass snake is given, so I'm struggling a bit at the moment! If anyone has any other sources for preferably V.b head scale nomenclature it would be of great help.

Just for fun I make Biggie

7281?(I'm not sure yet which is group 5)92

On the bright side I did realise whilst sitting at the dentist this morning there is a catch all, if the groups are consistently labelled the odd labelling mistake isn't the end of the world as you could still test for n, total number of scales for labelled groups, i.e. from my reckoning Biggie would have n = 7 + 2 + 8 + 1 + 9 + 2 = 29 though the matching set will probably be larger particularly for numbers close to the mean, it does allow for some further checking if there no immediate match.

I'm off to scrutinise Benson's examples a bit more, though the web images are a bit blurry. If anyone has the original paper to hand.. beg beg beg beg

Brillant

I am going to look into this technique for my photos

Jon