Jeremy,

Excellent work, I commend you for tackling this huge undertaking. I have always been curious about this polygenetic situation but lacked the space and time to do what you have done. Thanks a bunch. I think that one of the confounding attributes of the "red" genetics is the often delayed expression of color. I am often surprised at how wrong my predictions can be of who will turn red and who won't. I see yearlings that I would have never suspected would turn red that in fact became bright flowerpot red. I held a really bright red male back several years ago and finally gave him to a friend. The red on that snake was later replaced with a brown color. I suspect that somewhere along the pathway of expression for red there was some kind of failure.

My line, the "Kingsville Texas" line resulted from the breeding of a very red wild caught female to a normal same locality male. My founder female was pretty incredable whereas the male was a caramel color. This line lacks dark pigment as well as being red, making them fairly low contrast, almost to the point of being somewhat hypo-melanistic. I am currently trying to breed for a very red and very black sayi using a super dark Kankakee line with my red line. I am only as far as raising a pair of f3's and they are showing some red tinting and are only moderately contrasty. I am somewhat fearfull that the red and black pigment production pathways may be somehow inversly connected. Time will tell. I also hope to breed a Stillwater hypo/Kingsville red to his hypo red daughter (from a breeding with him and a stillwater), next year. both are hypo and both have a strong orange red coloration. As you noted there is alot of potential regarding the "red" in sayi. The red/hypo male of mine actually has gray/green saddles. Sorry to ramble on but I got caught up in your enthusiasm for the topic!

Thanks again for all of your hard work and thank you very much for sharing your findings with everyone!

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