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Meet Jon Poff: An introduction to Kingsnake.com's new Owner

Blaze

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Posted by: Tony D at Thu Feb 14 09:49:41 2013   [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Tony D ]  
   

A little history on the Blaze phase goini. In the late 90s several breeders including myself and the McQuates we independently working on line breeding for “hi-red” goini. As most people know neonate goini are spectacular animals but loose much of their color as adults. None of us at the time were working with locality specimens but neither were we looking to outcross these animals into anything that would dilute the intensity of red. It was during this period that the McQuates popped out a rather unique animal that was a quantum improvement over the rest of the clutch. This one snake was the first blaze and it was bred back into the line and proved to behave as a simple recessive trait. This is a key point; “blaze” as a trait arose out of a line-bred project but is a discrete heritable trait that follows a classic mendelion pattern.

It has been said to be a HYPERtheristic (sp?) because it looked intensely red as a neonate but I came to believe that is was some sort of HYPOmelanism. I thought this for two reasons. Number 1, if you were expecting a hi red animal the original blaze disappointed as adults. Second, normal goini are hi high red as neonates. I theorized that they just looked redder because the melanin was reduced. I was not alone in this and several detractors started saying that the blaze line was simple a goini X hypo brooks cross. This “theory” was tested and found to be false as goini proved not to be allelic with the hypo trait found in brooks kings. At the time there were several line of hypo brooks but all were know to be allelic or compatible.

Still accusations that the McQuate created blaze by crossing persists. People who push this have to conveniently forget that it’s a heritable trait not idetified in other kings and site pattern characteristics they feel are un-goini. However, just because one does not understand the mechanism of this trait is not sufficient evidence of its origin.

My experience with blaze is that this form of hypomelanism , as do others, affects not only the intensity of melanin but pattern elements as well. In other words, not only is black pigment muted to varying degrees but the area occupied by melanin based pigment is also diminished.

The attached picture demonstrates this. You can see that the primary blotch element of the patter has greatly reduced amount of melanin with pigmented area receding to the scale edges. The inter space pattern which would normally have lighter scales with clean well defined tips of darker pigment show a similar though nearly complete recession of pigmentation. Given that the original het blaze exhibited typical goini pattern elements the anomaly observed in the homozygous form has to be attributed to the trait. Anyone claiming that it’s due to crossing isn’t looking at the evidence.



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Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Emmerson

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