Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just purchased a black and white banded female and a black and yellow aberrant male from the pomona show. The male has a strange pattern that I found interesting (pics as soon as I get them). Im not real clear on the genetics of these two and I was wondering what I might expect when I breed them. They both ate pinkies today, so I expect them to do well.

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If you breed your aberrant into your banded, then the aberrancy will start to take over on your first clutch. Although you will get some bandeds, you will start to get broken bandeds and definitely some aberrancies on your first clutch. Could even get some striping. The fun part about aberrancies is that they are all different!

Kerby...

Awesome thats what I was hoping for. Does that mean the aberrant is codominant or what?

Kerby...

>Awesome thats what I was hoping for. Does that mean the aberrant is codominant or what?

AFAIK, most of these aberrant patterns are produced by the striped mutant gene. Your guess is as good as mine as to why there is so much variation. FWIW, I've seen a very nice striped Cal king that came from a very poorly striped Cal king that was mated to a normal (banded) Cal king.

The definition of a codominant mutant is that it produces a different appearance when heterozygous (one mutant gene paired with one normal gene) than the effect produced when homozygous (there is a pair of mutant genes). And neither looks normal.

The definition of a dominant mutant is that it produces the same appearance when heterozygous and when homozygous. And neither looks normal.

Striped in the California king snake falls between these two categories. [Nature is sloppy. 8-)] There is a lot of variation in the heterozygous animals. To me, the key to putting striped in one of the categories (above) is that there is no reliable method (AFAIK) to separate at least 95% of the heterozygous striped snakes from at least 95% of the homozygous striped snakes. So I call striped a dominant mutant with variable expressivity. Variable expressivity is not uncommon, but the textbooks writers want clear cut examples.

Paul Hollander