Posted by:
boaphile
at Sat Jun 9 09:51:29 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by boaphile ]
OK, Scoria Boas; So how did this happen?
I don't know if anyone else noticed this but, this is something really interesting that we should take some note of.
Scoria Boas. This year the original Scoria Boa was bred to a completely unrelated female and produced 18 babies. Ten of them Scoria and eight not. This just about guarantees that the Scoria is in fact a Dominant genetic trait and possibly a Co-Dominant mutation. We'll have to wait for somebody to prove them Co-Dom some time later. Two years ago this same male bred his mother and produced about half a litter of Scorias and half not. That made it look like it probably was a simple recessive trait right? Not so fast.
The first litter that produced the very first Scoria male, in 2003, had a total of seventeen babies with only one of them being the Scoria male. Wow! What an animal! But only one. The two parents came from completely different sources and different times so they were not known to be related at all. Then the same pair produced another litter in 2004. This time there were twenty five babies in the litter with one single Scoria female making her appearance. Holy Mackerel! Did lightning struck twice?
The third litter that contained any Scoria was the original male's first litter produced after breeding his Mom. Despite this, because of the really really low number of Scorias in the first two litters, only one in each, I speculated that the Scoria Boas would be a Dominant genetic trait. I didn't make any scientific tabulation to come to that conclusion. Just looking at the numbers and only two coming from a total of 42 babies I just thought it seemed really unlikely that they were a simple recessive mutation.
Now this year using an unrelated female ten of eighteen are Scoria Boas. So has anyone else thought about this? Did lightning strike twice? A single pair of animals were bred twice and produced the first two litters. Each of these litters contained a single new mutation that right now appears to be Dominant. So how did that happen? What is within these two original parents that apparently makes them genetically predisposed to crank out a brand new Dominant mutation not once but twice? Mutations are supposed to just spontaneously occur and are not "made" right? Well, something unique must be in these two animals to have had not one new mutant, but two pop up. Not only that but it is the exact same mutation that has occurred both times? Something is "making" these new Scoria Boas.
So HOW does that work?
One thing I have thought about for a while is this. Most of the time when a new "morph" pops up, it pops up from wild caught animals. They are most often imports and not captive bred. What is important about this is most of the time, a single new mutant appears with no related animals to be found. In this case, Jeff in North Dakota still has nearly all the related animals to the Scoria Boas. Another interesting case in point although slightly different is the "T-Positive Albino" Argentines and the Motley Argentines. Both came from the same bloodline. Everyone thought that was just an unbelievable coincidence. This next question has no basis in science or even logic for that matter but, "are animals that produce a new mutation just somehow more likely to have "lightning strike twice" or create more than one mutation?"
These few things have just been rolling around inside that big empty box that I call my head. Does anyone else have any thoughts along these lines or a specific explanation as to how a single pair of animals can twice produce a new mutation?
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 OK, Scoria Boas; So how did this happen? - boaphile, Sat Jun 9 09:51:29 2007
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