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I just walked in to my snake room and my female ALBINO that was bred to my Hypo Harlequin had her clutch. It was pretty bad mostly slugs two hypos I thought were dead, but upon inspection they are moving so hopefully the will live. BUT THERE ARE TWO ALBINOS AS WELL!!!! SHE WAS ONLY BRED TO THE HYPO HARLEQUIN WHAT THE HECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!THIS WAS HER FIRST YEAR BREEDING EVER!!!!!!!!!!!! SHE WASNT WITH ANOTHER MALE!!!!!

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Frank Roberts
R&R Herpetological Frank Roberts & John Rodriguez
Roberts'Realm of Reptile Research

Staurt I am new to the boa forum and just want you to know I was being a wise a$$ when I posted that. I mean not to offend you by posting the obvious (unless it is retained sperm from a previous breeding like you posted later). I just wanted to clarify I wasn't insulting you in any way, just being my self, I often as someone from this forum pointed out to me thru email, post very peculiar comments to long time posters such as yourself.
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Frank Roberts
R&R Herpetological Frank Roberts & John Rodriguez
Roberts'Realm of Reptile Research

Sounds like your male is het full of albino!!! LOL!! Congrats!! Andy
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Congrats man! Andy
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Probably just some ol' pastels....I wouldn't get too excited about them,I think that Rainshadow guy's just tryin' to make somthin' outta nothin' and rip people off....(*LOL* congrats Stuart! similar thing happened to me this year,breeding a virgin F3...it's those darned magic albinos of yours,THAT'S WHAT IT IS!!!!) (p.s. April,if you're reading this...the male you used came from the same litter as Stuart's! breed him to Lemondrop this fall,who knows???)
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to get these? I guess Ill have to wait till next year for sure if he is 100% het albino but now Im thinking he should be on my double het sunglows next year or maybe a motley het albino?? Hmmm this is weird! Did you know that the albino gene was in there? I cant explain it any other way unless last year the female retained sperm but I dont remember trying to breed her last year. I might have. Hmmm weird stuff lol.

>> (p.s. April,if you're reading this...the male you used came from the same litter as Stuart's! breed him to Lemondrop this fall,who knows???)

You're kidding!?! Now wouldn't that be awesome if he turns out to be a het too! Looks like he's got a date with Lemondrop this coming season!

Hey, congrats Stuart, I hope that those babies do okay and those yolks get absorbed quickly.
-april
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'There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."' -Rainshadow

That I've bred ANY original strain albino stuff into the Harlequin line...back in April I produced two albinos,(both D.O.A.)from breeding an albino male,(produced by Stuart in 03)to a virgin,pure Harlequin-line female,(no hypo involved,so that rules out the original hypo line used, being the culprit.)what struck me as odd,after the initial shock,was that there were only two,(homo x het should yield 50/50,and there were a total of 17 babies.) I shrugged it off as just hitting the low end stats...one of the things that I find interesting now is that you only got two as well...maybe just coincidence? weird,wild schtufff The Harlequin enigma takes another turn.(*hang on!*)
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Well the thing is they were a little early I think. I started questioning if the female was gravid at all and if she would eat or not so two days ago I gave her a rat and she ate. She threw this clutch today. The albinos are on the early side with alot of yolk. I have them in deli cups to see if they will make it. They dont look like sunglows imagine they could have been sunglow harlequins lol. I dont know Ill wait and see. Here is a hypo. The other one on better inspection isnt a hypo I think its a harlequin though.

I'm sorry you had so many slugs but its pretty cool you got 2 albinos. I have seen crazy things like this on this forum before. Do you think that it was just some fluke or do you think you have a new line of albinos. I would think it was just a fluke but I know some others feel differently. That you must have a new line of albinos because the male was not a het. Just curious what you and everyone else thinks? Thanks and once again, congrats!
Michael Burton

The pics of the litter I just posted this morning came from my Hypo Harley bred to a Normal female. I swear there are 4 Anerys in the litter. I didn't want to mention anything until they shed and I was sure they are Anery but after hearing this I could not resist. Congrats even though the litter wasn't all it could have been. Vinnie

with every litter like this someone usually mentions the possibility of parthenogenisis. A homozygous morph female bred to a non gene carrier male (assumed) and produceing the morph. If one of the albinos is a male, that would undeniably mean that your male is a het, if they are both females, you male may or may not be a het.

Breeding your Hypo Harli to a DH Sunglow or Motley het Albino next year would be a good idea to prove him for sure.

Even if that were the case a male could be produced:

The following report is derived in part from a presentation given to the Tucson Herpetological Society by Gordon W. Schuett, Department of Life Sciences, Arizona State University West, Phoenix, Arizona, on September 16, 1997, as reported in The Sonoran Herpetologist, the Newsletter of the THS, Vol.11, No.9, September, 1998.

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Parthenogenesis, reproduction without fertilization by a male, has been reported in only a few different groups of reptiles, most notably New World lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus (family Teiidae), Old World lizards of the genus Lacerta (family Lacertidae), and the Brahminy blind snake (Ramphotyphlops braminus; family Typhlopidae). In all of these cases, the populations are composed entirely, or almost entirely, of genetically identical female individuals, or clones. Thus, it came as quite a surprise when Dr. David Chiszar of the University of Colorado, Boulder, found that a timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) in his lab that had never been with a male since its birth had produced a litter of offspring: one live, two stillborn, and three infertile eggs. More surprising was the fact that the live and stillborn offspring were all males. Clearly, this parthenogenetic reproduction was different than that practiced by the known unisexual reptiles. (This event was reported to the CHS by Dr. Chiszar in January of 1996.)
In October of 1995, Dr. Chiszar reported this odd occurrence by telephone to Gordon W. Schuett, at Arizona State University. Schuett had been studying sperm storage in reptiles, and was faced with a puzzle of his own: a wandering garter snake (Thamnophis elegans vagrans) that had been producing litters, some with viable offspring, in the absence of males for about 10 years. Schuett utilized the now familiar method of DNA fingerprinting to test for any paternal contribution to the offspring. DNA fingerprinting separates the genetic material of an individual, so that it appears as a long series of bands, each corresponding to a particular genetic component in the individual's DNA. Parents are determined by matching shared bands; the more bands that match, the greater the probability that a parent has been found. A perfect match of band-sharing between two individuals (in number and location of bands) indicates a very close genetic relationship, such as found in identical twins or clonal species like the unisexual Cnemidophorus.

Schuett found that the mother garter snake had up to twice as many bands as the offspring, not an anticipated result, but that those bands possessed by the offspring matched almost perfectly with those of the mother, indicating that all the DNA in the offspring came from the mother, but that not all the mother's DNA was present in the offspring. Thus, this was a true parthenogenesis, with no male contribution (which would have provided genetic material to the offspring that was different from that provided by the mother). But the missing DNA from the mother, coupled with the fact that all the offspring were males, lead Schuett to the conclusion that the reproduction observed was a form known as automictic parthenogenesis (AP). AP had been previously described in domestic turkeys and chickens, and the offspring produced are all diploid males. (Diploid is the normal condition for sexual reproduction, indicating that all chromosomes occur in pairs.)

To understand automictic parthenogenesis, one must first understand meiosis, the process by which sex cells (eggs and sperm) are produced. In normal cell division, or mitosis, every chromosome is first duplicated, then one copy of every chromosome is drawn to each end of the cell. Then, when the cell divides, each daughter contains exactly the same genetic compliment as the parent cell. Meiosis, on the other hand, is a two stage process, ultimately producing four cells. In the first division, the chromosomes are not duplicated; rather the paired chromosomes line up together (remember, all chromosomes are paired in diploid cells) and one of every pair is drawn to each end of the cell. The daughter cells now contain only half the genetic material of the parent cells (one chromosome from each pair), and are called haploid cells. The second stage of meiosis proceeds similarly to normal cell division, with each chromosome being duplicated before division occurs. Thus meiosis produces four haploid cells, two of them containing one half of the parent's original DNA, and the other two the remaining half. In the female, three of these four cells contain the genetic material and little else; the majority of the cytoplasm, or cell fluids, is retained by the fourth cell, which becomes the egg. The other three cells, called polar bodies, are generally reabsorbed into the female's body.

In AP, the second polar body -- the daughter cell produced along with the egg in the second stage of meiosis -- acts like a sperm and re-enters the egg. Essentially the egg fertilizes itself! As this polar body contains identical genetic material to the egg, having been produced by normal division of an already haploid cell, the resulting diploid cell has only half the genetic diversity of the female's original cells. Thus fewer bands appear in the DNA fingerprint of the offspring.

So why are all the viable offspring males? In most mammals, sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, two of which constitute a pair. A pair of X chromosomes and the individual is female; one X and one Y and the individual is male. (As the mother has only X chromosomes -- generally, a YY combination isn't possible, and wouldn't be viable if it were.) In those diapsids (including birds, lizards, and snakes) where AP has been described, females have dissimilar sex chromosomes (ZW), while males have two copies of the same chromosome (ZZ). In AP, if the egg and the second polar body each contain a Z chromosome, when they are combined, a male offspring will be produced. If they both contain a W chromosome (a 50% chance), the egg will be non-viable (WW). This is what causes the high proportion of infertile eggs in AP parthenogenesis.

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Frank Roberts
R&R Herpetological Frank Roberts & John Rodriguez
Roberts'Realm of Reptile Research

in 2003 myself and jeff gray had the same thing happen. we breed one of my harlequin orangetail males to his albino female. the results all slugs and one fully formed premie albino.

things that make you say Hmmmmmmmmm?
Congrats Stuart
Later B
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People will say what they want to say, believe what they want to believe. No matter what proof you have to the contrary.

Brendan
BCI by Design

When I was writing the post above,but couldn't remember the particulars,thanks for filling in the details.
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