Chris, I take no offense to anything you have said. However, I would like to know what "characteristics" you see in this particular specimen that leads you to believe that he is not indeed an Ambato?
Unfortunately it is very difficult to specifically characterize a locale in a way that effectively differentiates it from another. The reality is that no characteristic is going to be perfect and you’re always going to have examples that do not fit for one character or another, despite the purity of an animal. In general it's a certain look that you get used to picking up on with time. So with that said, I don’t know that I can effectively characterize what I would expect an Ambato to look like in a way that will explicitly disqualify animals that I can otherwise look at and say without a doubt that they aren’t Ambato, but I'll at least try to give you an idea of some of the things I think of as typical for this locale.
First, here are two photos I took of F. pardalis on the Ambato peninsula:
To me, an Ambato will have a light blue coloration (almost white in areas) with dark/purplish –red (or sometimes dark blue) bars and a broken white longitudinal stripe. These bars often fade dorsally (i.e.,
https://www.chameleonforums.com/who-has-blue-turquoise-ambato-panther-12468/index3.html#post100525). The eye turrets will have dark radiating bars, but will not be overly red (i.e.,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36524915@N05/8746260042) and will generally have a yellow infused background color. Yellow will also typically be exhibited in the temporal region and on the posterior ends of the lips. When fired up, the light blue body becomes light, almost white. The light blue portion of the body will not have red speckling (i.e.,
http://image.shutterstock.com/displ...s-in-front-of-a-white-background-13508377.jpg). Further, the dark red bars will not have dark blue speckling (i.e.,
http://static9.depositphotos.com/15...-Chameleon-Nosy-Be-skin-Furcifer-pardalis.jpg), nor will dark blue bars (when present) have red speckling (i.e.,
http://flchams.com/inventory/BrantleyWeb.jpg). Dark red/blue bars can be infused with the light blue, however (i.e.,
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/7008/bluediamond3ci8.jpg or
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_eyYuo_Xv2...Vambm5kkncs/s1600/ambanja_blue_diamond020.jpg).
Looking at your animal, the white you are talking about seems like faded blue in an old animal (not that Ambato’s don’t get old too, I'm just pointing out that the "white-ness" may not be what it seems). There also seems to be quite a bit of red infusing the pale blue/white areas, particularly at the posterior half and on the head where it is not included in discrete barring.
As I said, none of these are perfect, and a lot of it boils down to just having seen a lot of them over the years and having a feel for it.
Chris
