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I have a question concerning the blue eyed blonde morph from Vivid reptiles. I know it is not the lavender albino and is a form of hypo, but I also am frequently told that there are two types of "lavender albino"; one called type one and the other type two. I know that the blue eyed blonde is not typew 1 lav alb, but has anyone tested it against the "type 2" lav alb? Does anyone have any information on the differences between the two forms of lav alb? I am curious if the BEB morph is the lav alb type 2 on a different background. Any thoughts? Any knowledge out there?
Thanks.
BDR

There are the JR & JD strains. I'm not sure if the Blue-Eyed Blondes is either one. I believe there are more hypomelanistic genes out right now (about 6-7). Some may even be a combination of 2 recessive hypo genes. There is a lot of in-betweens besides the 2 extremes on the left and right.

Kerby...

What does the designation "JR" and "JD" actually stand for and how exactly can they be distinguished? Does anyone know in what way they differ? Are they alleles at the same loci or non-alleleic? I know the BEB is a single autosomal recessive. I have done the test, and it is not one form of the two "lav alb" as I have done the mating. (I have the light form, which ever that is; JR or JD). Thanks Kerby!
BDR

Hey Brian,

Good to see you back on the snakes forums again.

JR and JD are the intials of two breeders the strains originated from. They just both happen to have the same first initial.

I think the first one is John Ruiz and I cannot recollect who the second one was.

And further. They are not compatable, if you get hypos breeding a JR to a JD then they must have been hets too. Lloyd Lemke told me that. He had both strains and I assume was around for the beginning of both. Also according to Lloyd one was more purple lavender and the other was more gray lavender. One had brighter yellow bands but I forget which. Sometime I will look it up again but I have posted the exact descriptions from Lloyd's lists before on here. I don't think you can positively ID them by thier color anymore because the breeding of different cal kings of different base colors would have had to have an effect on the manifestation of the hypo.
Try Len Kryskos website for pictures, he used to have them.

Thanks Rainer. Drop me an email sometime. I suspected the initials were something like that and not any genetic designation.
BDR

I got this male last year thru the process of some breeder in CA, and then a few friends and was told that it was a blue eyed blond, or at the first person it was sold to, it had that label. After further investigating, it looks exactly like the HET blue eyed blondes that Vivid was selling last year. I actually favor this better though. Tripped out at first, cause I was like," this is not a BEB!!" lol!

Anyways..I like him and here is his pic. What do ya think Kerby?

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Genesis 1:1

It's definitely not a Blue-Eyed Blonde (BEB). Unless they bred a BEB to a different looking cal king and then bred back and produced that. If it is a het, then it definitely has a unique look to it. That would be cool to be able to ID hets. I won't be producing mine or hets from mine for a couple of years as mine weren't eating when I got them. I had to brumate them and then they were still slow starters. They are doing fine, but there is no way I will be able to breed them in 2007. I will have to wait until 2008.

Kerby...

It resembles the El-Dorado that Aaron posted.

Kerby...

You think so? Yeah..I kinda see it.
BUT...mine does resemble the hets advertised from Vivid last year to a tea. I think the original breeder either thought that they were actual BEBS while all along they were hets, or the name was taken out of whack or something.
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Genesis 1:1

I don't think the Vivid (BEB) is either lavender, but I don't have any lavenders, and am not sure. The Vivid morph was a locality animal to start with, from coastal San Diego, but has been crossed with normals. The BEB (Vivid) trait is passed on, I believe, as you have alluded to. I don't think the lavenders are blue-eyes and the lavendering may vary, not as much like the BEB trait.

The El Dorado blue-eyed blonde, from the northern part of the valley, is a different locality animal, and not the same gene locale as Vivid's. This is not a lavender either and there may be other things going on with this morph, like sexual dimorphism. There's a lot of space bt. the top of the great valley and San Diego. There are likely many morphs, like Kerby referred to, just bt these two points (imo), and a lot can be going on in nature, let alone in the trade.

I saw a pic of a w/c king yesterday someone caught from near the middle of the valley that had a chocolate-black belly and was chocolatey on top and had yellowish ground color. A beautiful snake and probably with a similar hypermelanistic trait that the Davis blackbellies have north of the valley. In other words, I feel a lot of genetic traits are being passed around with the kings, and there's probably even more to be discovered, if they last long enough in the wild to be found.

Some traits remain with locality animals and some, like lavendering are passed around a lot and could be connected with several different genes and combinations. I think Vivid's BEB is like an albino type and stays true, a cool snake, but that's just my opinion. I know it has been crossed with other blue-eyes and has proved different. Good luck finding out about the lavenders. Off to work....

TC

>>I have a question concerning the blue eyed blonde morph from Vivid reptiles. I know it is not the lavender albino and is a form of hypo, but I also am frequently told that there are two types of "lavender albino"; one called type one and the other type two. I know that the blue eyed blonde is not typew 1 lav alb, but has anyone tested it against the "type 2" lav alb? Does anyone have any information on the differences between the two forms of lav alb? I am curious if the BEB morph is the lav alb type 2 on a different background. Any thoughts? Any knowledge out there?
>>Thanks.
>>BDR

Hi TC;
Thanks for your post. I do agree that the Vivid BEB is not either lav, but I have only test mated it to the lighter form, which is the one I have. I bought a pair of the BEB four years ago from Vivid. The male made it, the female didnt; never would eat. I found them to be way smaller than any of my L.g.c. and grew slower. WIthout a BEB to breed the male to, I bred him with San Diego loc. cal females and tested him onto the lav (light form), black and white "desert" and a few others. Interesting results. The BEB is definately not the light lav, and I highly suspect it is not the darker lav either, but was just curious if anyone else had done the test. My line of lav are visibly different than the BEB. All of my lavender have blue eyes, though not as bright a blue as the BEB. The lavendr and the BEB have a red pupil, very dark in both, though again, the BEB is darker than the lav. I am convinced that the lav is a T alb. I am not sure on the BEB. I think that in many cases the designation of "lav alb" and "hypo" is describing different forms of a very similar thing. In other words, some hypos are actually T alb, though certainly not all of them, but I suspect it may be the case in some of these L.g.c hypos.
I am very interested in the El Dorado BEB. Are there any pics around anywhere? I do think sexual dimprphism plays a role in many of these lav/hypo/t alb type morphs, much as we see in the lavender cornsnake. Background genetics, of course are playing a role in all this too. For instance, the BEB from Vivid has extremely bright yellow. In the test to the black/white, the f1 were very normal, dark brownish with creamy bands, just like you would expect from black/white X brown/yellow. In the f2 (f1xf1) the only animals with the extreme bright yellow were those which were BEB homozygotes. The normal brown/yellow were average while there were no black/yellow, but there were a couple of nearblack.white and one brown/white and a couple that looked just like the f1. The fact that the only ones with the high bright yellow were BEB homozygotes. This indicates that not only does this gene dilute the eumelanin, but it also intensifies the xanthine. That is a double effect. Certainly not unheard of but not common ewither, and very interesting.
The dark bellied morphs are nice looking, fascinating. I really like taht morph. It would be pretty with any of these hypo genes, especially a form of hypo coming from the same location as the dark bellied phase. I agree that the range you are talking about and where the Vivid BEB and others came from is a resevoir of interesting genes, and like you, I hope they survive. Thanks for your input.
BDR

Here is an El Dorado hypo I got from Gerald Merker. To me the pupils don't look ruby.
I have seen a homozygous Blue Eyed Blond X Desert phase that did not have yellow bands. I think the bright yellow of the BEB is more a factor of the normal colors of the original locality rather than anything to do with the mutation. Probably more test breeding and you will see some cream banded Desert x BEB's. Carlsbad is only about 5 miles from the Elfin Forest. I haven't seen any kings specifically from the Elfin Forest but I have seen many from Carlsbad and some of them have amazingly bright yellow, just as bright as the BEB's.

Hi;
Thanks for th epic. I crossed the BEB to five black/white females. There were 44 f1 animals. From those, I kept 16 (4.12) and produced 93 offspring in the f2. Not one BEB showed any white. Not one non-BEB showed the high level of yellow. This would seem to indicate a plieotrpic effect of the mutation. HOWEVER, it could also mean that there is a linkage between the BEB factor and a xanthic intensification factor, and thus, I would not expect to see the white emerge on the BEB or the high yellow emerge without the BEB homozygosity, except through very high numbers or chance. While it is the case that my numbers were high enough to give a good representation of the workings of the gene, certainly, fate can intervene, and thus it will take more work to prove that the high yellow and the hypo ar eeither plieotropic or linked or neither. Thanks for the info on the BEB/white animal. I look forward to going further with this and seeing how things fall out over time. It is an interesting gene and the BEB line from Vivid are my personal favorite cals that I have ever worked with. Thanks for the pic of the other animal. It looks much like I would imagine the BEB from Vivid would look with the yellow replaced by white. It is very attractive.
BDR
Panoplia Geneticus

Aaron, that's a beautiful animal. The El Dorado BEBs are my favorite Cal King because of their looks, the locality, the sexual dimorphism, etc, but the look alone is awesome. According to Gerald (his pic) and others the color intensity fades in old specimens of the hypo morph...

Just thought I'd throw that in there, since there is some variation in different individuals.

Also, there's variation in the Vivid BEB. The yellow is not always intense and there are specimens that have other ground color shades.

Cheers...TC

Hello!

You can see from this pic of a baby that the El Dorado blue-eyed blondes are pretty dark when this young...

But from the other pic posted of an adult you see they get lighter. Actually, the males are supposed to be the real light ones, whereas the females stay pretty dark. I don't know if this always holds true, but I'd like to find out as it's a very interesting possibility.

With the black-bellies from Davis and other places in the Valley, there's not only the hypermelanistic gene, but also there's something going on with the pattern, where some of the snakes are striped, some banded, some aberrant. I believe it's almost always the males that are striped, very interesting sexual dimorphism again. Also, I believe the El Dorado BEB and Davis black-belly could be influencing each other.

You mentioned the Vivid BEB being brown/yellow and possibly crossed with local coastal types from San Diego Co. I believe this is probably true. I also think this is the reason for the bright yellow ground color. I think it's because of the good number of brown/yellow snakes in the area. I also believe the hypo mutation helps enhance the colors of this snake. It is very nice, I agree.

My main question right now, working with all three of these morphs, the two BEBs, and the Davis black-belly, is, "What would the crosses look like if we crossed the black-belly with one of the blue-eyed blondes?" I know I'm just starting out, but I don't want to waste time if there's no chance of nice looking offspring from one of these pairings. It sounds like the hypermelanistic and hypomelanistic genes would be working against each other by definition, but my gut tells me that the crosses would be pretty cool, unique even. I picture a black-belly snake with somewhat aberrant pattern, with rather subdued dark colors, and maybe some cream or yellowish ground color. Any opinion on this?

Thanks for a great post, BDR.

Terry

This hypo male (Great Valley Serpentarium) calls this a Lavender will breed a Mendota (hypermelanistic) female producing double hets. Not sure what the combo will look like when I breed the babies back to each other.

Here is the male.

Kerby...

Mendota (hypermelanistic)

Kerby...

Wow.Thoseare both really pretty, Kerby.You work is really impressive. Is the male a different form of hypos from the various BEB forms? I think it is really exciting that there are som many forms of hypo in the cal. Now, someone needs to combine some of these hypo with the fully melanized hypermel cals to get a solid tan/coffee snake with the blue eyes.
BDR

There are still a lot of possibilities in the Cal King industry. I already have a lot of double-hets of various recessive genes. It just takes awhile to breed all the possibilities.

Kerby...

Kerby, that's a pretty sweet looking hypo. It's nicer than most of the lavenders I've seen (I'm prejudiced of course - it's more like the BEBS). I think paired with one of your Mendotas should produce some cool offspring eventually. F1's will be dbl. het normals, but they should still be interesting, I think. Look forward to seeing the pics.

TC

Terry;
Thanks for your post and the pic. In answer to your question about crossing the BEB types to the black belly (BB). First, I do not know the dominance order of the black belly trait. You refer to it as hypermelanism, but I dont think that is technically correct. In the broadest sense, yes, it is an increase in melanin on the underside of the animal, but hypermelanistics are more in the nature of the "black morph" of cal king, In other words, the hypermel increases all the melanin on the animal, rather than just in a particular area. I think the black belly animals are actually created by a factor which would seem to redirect the melanin, thus something in the nature of a "pattern gene". I have no idea if it is a single gene trait or a multigene trait. I do know that the Vivid (Elfin Forest) form of BEB is an autosomal recessive. So if you crossed the two forms, EF BEB and black belly, depending on how the black belly works, the coloring would be normal (non BEB as it is recessive, thus hides in the f1 when het). If the black belly trait is an autosoaml recessive then the f1 from BEB X BB would be normal coastal type cal. If the BB is dominant or co-dominant then the f1 would look BB or partial BB and normal color. It is in the f2 that you would get really interesting animals. I think you could make animals that have the distribution of the BB with the coloring of either form of BEB. If the BB trait is a straight out autosomal recessive, then you could get 1 in 16 from the f2 homozygous for both traits. If it is a dominant then you could get almost 1 in 4 with both traits in the f2, if you select well for the BB trait in the f1. If the BB trait is multigenic, then the numbers could drop drastically and it would take longer to set the full multigeneic homozygote. I will say that I do think it would be extremely lovely. Thanks again for the pics and interesting discussion.
BDR
Panoplia Geneticus

Brian, thanks for the genetics lesson. You have a much better background on this than I do. I'm mostly interested in ecology and behavior. You also paint a pretty picture of the F2 offspring. I have my hopes up now..LOL.

I know that the blackbellies have been crossed with the banana kings (coastal Calis). There are some out there called, "chocolate bananas", and there are also some totally chocolate colored kings that are awesome. I'm not sure, but I think the blackbelly pattern showed up in the F1 crossing with the bananas (BB x banana). I'm guessing on this from photos I've seen and could be wrong. They might have been F2's. I'd have to check with the breeder to be sure.

The Davis blackbellies that I have are said to be hypermelanistic and I believe were said to be a recessive. I'm guite sure it's a recessive gene, and plan to cross them with another morph in a couple more years. One of my Davis blackbellies...

Good luck with your projects and hope to see pics of offspring here.

Terry

Terry;
Thanks for the pic. If it is a simple recessive too, then 1 in 16 in the f2. I probably use terminology differently than it is used in the snake hobby. Hypermelanistic to me means fully melotic, but in it's broadest sense, it can mean "increased melanin", certainly. I would say such animals are showing "melanic extension" or "melanic intensification". Like I said, my lingo is more in regards to being a generalist with genetics, studying the genetics of many animals, especially domestics (including the domestic ape - Homo sapiens). It certainly doesnt mean that "I am right" or that "you are wrong", it is just different ways of using the terminology. I think those black bellies will look really hot with one of the BEB genes added, and of course, because I love high bright yellow, the EF BEB would be my favorite. Thanks again.
BDR
Panoplia Geneticus

Thanks for all the info on everything, Brian. I think the EF BEB will look great with the BB genes added, too. I like the brown/yellow kings alot. I may make that cross myself in a few yrs. In the meantime I'd love to hear about how yours turn out. Good luck with that...

TC

Is autosomal the same as simple recessive? It sounds like it from your 1 in 16 description of double homo. I can ad that the brownbelly kings are not just brownbelly. The melanin is increased in the light pattern parts. The light parts look like they have grease smudged on them. I don't know what that means with regard to it being a pattern redistibution or not. Everyone I have heard of breeding them says the brownbelly is simple recessive.

I have 1.2 Mendotas that I have been breeding for 4 years now and it is a simple recessive gene. I also have 1.1 of the Davis (Rick Staub stock) but won't be breeding them until next year (female is too small this year). I was going to breed the Davis male to a Mendota female but I have other plans for the Mendota females this year with other recessive genes.

My Mendota plans for this year:
Blizzard male x Mendota female
Lavender (Great Valley Serp stock) x Mendota female
Mendota male x Chocolate Banded (het hypermelanistic, father was Mendota)
Mendota male x 50-50 Banded (het hypermelanistic, father was Mendota)

Kerby...

Last year I bred my Ghost male to a Mendota (hypermelanistic) female producing double hets.

The female was twice the size as the Ghost male, but it didn't deter him.

Kerby...

Kerby...

Last year I bred some Chocolate Bandeds that I kept from when I bred a Mendota male x a Chocolate Banded female. She was 18 months old and laid 4 eggs. Two came out hypermelanistc and two came out Chocolate Banded.

For some reason I was hoping that I would get some BANDED hypermelanistics, BUT that was not the case. The aberrant pattern follows the hypermelanistic trait. The males have more of a striped pattern and the females have more of a banded pattern.

Kerby...

Those animals are definately hypermel. I think the other BB probably are too. I believe such animals could be selected for full hypermelanism; ie, self black (or brown) animals. The few animals I havve with full black bellies are more like banana cal, with very xanthic extended top sides and then fully black bellies. Those are pattern redistribution rather than melotic extension. These animals in this thread though are a form of hypermelanism, though not total, which is a full black or brown animal. Very nice snakes guys!! I am really interested in these breeding projects and I agree with you Kerby. There is stuff that could be done in cals taht seems few are even thinking about, unlike the cornsnake people, who take every new mutation and have it over every other mutation in what seems like weeks, lol. I'm not criticizing them!! I love that work, just always wondered why the cal people arent at it as hard and heavy too. Glad to see some of you are. BTW, do any of you know what a "copper" or "purple passion" king is? Any pics? Are they something really different or just a cool name for a monir additive effect? Thanks!!
BDR
Panoplia Geneticus

I've heard of them but have never seen them. Supposedly B.H.B. has them, but when you click on their web site, all you get is their Home Page.

So, no I have never seen them, nor do I know how they were made.

I will be producing cal kings that display 2 recessive genes at the same time soon. But the problem with cal kings is that the odds of getting 1/16 to display both is harder with smaller clutches as compared to the cornsnake industry.

Kerby...

It's just a theory of mine but there are completely brown cal kings. I believe Jetzen has one that he has posted pics of before. I saw one for sale once at the San Diego IRBA show once too. I also have a price list from Joe Pierce, Snakes Alive that has solid brown Cals listed and it says they came from the Davis area. I have never heard any other origin for the browns and have never heard anybody else claim there was solid brown Cals in Davis. There is also a pic in the Vivarium by Bian Hubbs of a near solid brown wild caught Cal from Covina that's a banded phase with extremely reduced bands. So there are brown Cals and they have been around a long time. My thoery is that the brown or near solid brown cals were bred with lavenders and then selectively bred to eliminate the banding to make a purple passion. But I have never seen a purple passion but it seems like exactly what you would get from that.
Also cannot rule out crossing Mexican Blacks with lavender Cals either.

I was told by the B.H.B. owner that they were his black melanized line (much like the brown you describe but solid black melanization) bred to the lavenders and tehn selected back to a solid lavender snake. Just wondered if anyone had seen them (I have never seen a pic) or had any other info onthem. Thanks both of you.
BDR

Those are some neat projects you got there Kerby.

Kerby, that's real cool stuff and nice pix. The hypermel trait behaves just like the Davis BB trait, but I'm not sure what the chocolate bandeds are. Are they normal, with the BB trait (hets)?

Also, in the previous pic, the lav looks almost like an albino, and the hypermel looks almost like a melanistic. I would think that the f2 (from the crossed dbl hets, displaying both traits) will look like a snow. I'm not sure how you got your ghost, but could that be nearly the same.

Terry

I bred that Lavender to an albino and got double hets. When next to an albino, there is a definite difference. Also I bred a Ghost to a Mendota last year and got double hets (not the same gene).

Kerby...

Thanks for the info, Kerby. There's so many gene types with kings and corns, it's hard to keep track of them all...LOL.

TC

>>I bred that Lavender to an albino and got double hets. When next to an albino, there is a definite difference. Also I bred a Ghost to a Mendota last year and got double hets (not the same gene).
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>>Kerby...