Very pretty boas and a very interesting project.

I didn't see any hard information about the patternless babies' mother on the web site. Is she out of the harlequin project, too? If so, how closely is she related to the father? She looked like a normal snake, to me. Not an orangetail, and not a harly. Is she a (presumed) het harly or an unrelated snake? The patternless were in 2005. The father died, but is the mother still around? Has she been bred to any other males???

From the HarlequinBoa web site, it looks to me as if harlequin is a recessive mutant gene. If patternless is at all related to harlequin, then patternless is likely to be a recessive mutant gene, too.

I thought that it was interesting that there were no harlequins in the patternless litter. Could this be just the luck of the draw? Or could it indicate something else?

I don't think there is enough information to draw any conclusions right now. So everything following this is brainstorming. The snakes will tell us eventually which of my ideas is right.

1. Patternless is a mutant gene that is dominant to the normal version of the gene totally unrelated to harlequin, though it masks the expression of the harlequin mutant. It was a spontaneous mutantion in either the father or the mother. If in the mother, has she been bred to any other snake? Objection: But if the mother was supposed to be het harlequin, why weren't there any harlequin babies?

2. Same as 1 except patternless is a codominant mutant. Same objection, too.

3. Same as 1 except patternless is a recessive mutant. Same objection. Also, both parents would have to be het patternless.

4. Patternless is a mutated version of the harlequin gene present in the mother only. That gene is dominant to the harlequin gene and recessive to the normal version of the gene. That would explain the no harlequin babies.

5. There is another explanation that I haven't written down or haven't thought of. I'm out of web surfing time now.

Paul Hollander

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