Reptile & Amphibian Forums

While much of the chatter over pedigrees revolves around documenting whether or not an animal is a pure subspecies there is another aspect that concerns me and that the late habit of creating dubious morphs crossings and improper naming. Examples would include:

Red X xanthic bulls = red bulls that aren’t red. Simply don’t get it.

Double albinos! One in four neonates of the F2 generation are albinos but which gene is responsible? Its possible to sell two albinos from this clutch that can only produce normal phenotypes when back breed.

Hibinos, this one might actually have some merit but my initial suspicion is that albinism would cases mask the hypomelanism in most cases. I wonder how many people are selling these that have not done the necessary back breeding to prove the genetics of their stock.

T+ albino. Too many people just throw this name out with no idea what it means. T+ DOES NOT MEAN PARTIAL ALBINO. T+ albinos need not be distinguishable from T- albinos! T+ simply means that a given amelanistic phenotype is cause by some other metabolic process than the failure to produce tyrosinase, an enzyme used in the production of melanin.

I don’t know if this is part of the pedigree conversation, but it’s something I feel more strongly about than some of the other points I see brought up. It’s acquiring certain lines from one of the more famous “names” in the business. For example a “Norm Damm” Honduran or “Lloyd Lemke” etc. I always thought it was very nice to buy in to a line known for producing outstanding stock that you may have coveted from seeing a picture in a magazine or something. Some of these big names have had the privilege of sorting through, in some cases, thousands of hatchlings and fresh imports and selecting the very best of the best. So buying into those guys lines really cuts down the search for the average Joe to end up with something just as fantastic. I can see preserving the paper trail and documenting the lines in those cases from micro chipping or something to get “certified” so and so stock. It’s the closest thing to patented varieties, which could include every type, from “Henry Dean” hybrids to ‘Name here” locality stock.

Red X xanthic bulls = red bulls that aren’t red. Simply don’t get it.

the only thing i get maybe is that RED and Xanthic are 2 different recessive genes (or maybe just a red normal)when bred together produce normals?
Which is the reddest the Xanthic or the RED,even back breeding the normals(D. Hets)the odds are only 1 in 16 i producing a RED Xanthic...sounds like a project for young folks LOL i know you have produced Ghosts so you already know the odds,Peace Chris

Breed the 2x hets back to a homo and all the homo young produced will be 50% het for the other trait. In a couple years you can test them for the other trait by breeding to the other trait.

IE - breed 2x hets to both axanthic and red.
hold back the axanthic and red offspring - and breed them to each other. 1/4 clutches will produce 25% double morphs, and the clutches that don't will identify which single homos are het for the other trait and which are not.

I suspect that's actually how a lot of double morphs are made, at least by those who have the space.
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x.y L. getula californiae (Cal. King)
x.y L. getula nigrita (MBK)
x.y L. getula floridana (Brooksi)
x.y Pantherophis guttatus guttatus (Corn)
0.1 Pituophis catenifer catenifer (Pacific gopher)
0.1 Heterodon nasicus (W Hognose)
x.y.z Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata - (Cal. Alligator Lizard)

were talkin bout Xanthic not Axanthic,but the same thing occurs

my terminology is off. I've never understood the phenotipic difference between xanthic axanthic or anitheristic, IN either case I understant them as no red pigment. Second red bulls are line bred verieties the trait isn't mendilian. So what I din't understand is taking a line bred red animal and bredding in a non red gene. IN the end you have unred bulls.

Xanthic snake would be a RED snake
Axanthic would be Blk/White The A is used the same as in Amel .

It took me awhile to see your point but you are correct. Seems I'm guilty of my own criticism by misusing the term. Ouch!

Is it just me or is the term widely misused?

its so easy to think Axanthic when you see Xanthic one reason is you rarely see an animal advertized as Xanthic but you do see some awesome Axanthics,i bet people have received red or yellow animals while hoping to get B/W.
kinda like that Cambridge University sduty on raeding.
Please dont take it as offesive critisizm,Friend of Snakes

"Please dont take it as offesive critisizm"

Certainly not. Learning something new makes me feel less an old dog!

Hold on i gotta get my glasses........LOL L8r Chris

just needed to add . Xanthism is an animal which is highly yellow(xanthin pigment), not red. Axanthism is lack of the yellow pigment in an animal. in either case Xanthic does not at all mean red in any sense of the term. Erythristic refers to red. Hypererythristic would be the most accurate term i would thing for a "red" bull. whatcha think?

I Agree and i think Webster does too.but some diluted reds are yellow and some intense yellows are red,maybe like yellow rice? and pharmacy grade red algae is called asta-Xanthin.
what is the best term for animals that lack both Y/R?? Peace Chris

Whatchutalkinabout Willis!!?

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Tom

"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

yeah, I certainly don't get some of the latest genetics, such as some of the cases in point...

just think of how many rows of peas mendel had to plant over the years to determine certain traits, and here some dude in anytown USA can determine the genetic origin of a trait from one egg (whether the trait is actually genetic is another story). amazing!

daveb

I agree, there is a horrible trend to just call things a morph and genetic when people have not done the crosses. Very anoying.

But at least there is a rationale for the hybinos. Albinos, such as hondurans, still develop tipping as they age. Its just white instead of black, as it accumulates it can cover the whole scale, kinda sucks in a tangerine albino. But, hypo reduces the amount of black and reduces the amount of tipping. So maybe the hybino has a reduced amount of white tipping, guess we'll see in a few more years.

Best,
Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

I can begin to tell you a few things and hope ot find time to write a detailed explanation but man that is gonna take some time...

For some Double morphs, T Negative-T Positive, and various confusing genetics I can say this.

Just because someone decides to make a topic about it on a forum has nothing to do with how new of an idea it may be. In most cases it is the opposite. It is somehting people have been discussing off the forum for months or even years. It bums me out to see people who do not understand things to practically take offense to it or bring it into a challening negative light.

Examples of things I "work on here"
Triple het San Diego Gophers....traceable text book snakes and predictable outcomes, yet others want to insist they have the same thing yet the person who started the project I now work with took 6 years to get it off the ground and we say with confidence no one elses are the same. There is double albino and we feel our identification of it is correct.

Peanut Butter Brooksi If you don't have them, believe me you don't know much about them. Pics are obviously going to get you somewhere but owning them and watching them change from hatchling to adult and to see the variation in them AND to see what they do when bred to other snakes shows there's a lot going on there. Some things take time, this snake is complex and in my opinion should be appreciated for being so. Some people find it appealing to have some unpredictablility in a new project, others do not. Any which way some of us have had them for a few years now and the conclusions we come too change from time to time because of seeing new things pop from year to year. For the record I just made a big mistake misidentifying a PB and it was embarrasing and a major hassle for myself and 2 others. This is just not as easy to understand as many other morphs....Some people bow to Mexicana complex as a great thing to work with. Throw a complex morph in the mix and it gets trampled on more than it gets appreciated

Envy Stock Sonoran Gophers. Try and explain a co dom colubrid.... Sometimes a definitive aspect of something being Hypo means you breed a snake with a specific look to another and after producing and raising hets you eventually produce more that sport that look. Take a yellower than average Gopher and breed it to a brown one and get more yellows immediately.....but no, that is not a Hypo or co dom??? How would you feel if you saw this result continually for 10 seasons straight regardless of which of the other 3 morphs withing this line was bred to a normal gopher??? Blizzard to normal brown gopher....yellow het Blizzards,Ghost to brown Gopher...yellow het Ghost gophers, Hybino to brown gopher...yellow het Hybino Gophers.... Still, this goes challenged. Myself and one other person discussed this for over two years before I wrote my article and we're still open to hypothesis from anyone willing to discuss it without some know it all confrontational attitude.

Just because someone does not "get it" or understand things does not mean it should be surrounded by doubt. This is how a negative vibe can become attatched to a snake and ruin its intregity. This is also why I try and write articles about these things. This is the type of place where trying to explain something that is harder than typical genetics can be maddening. I am all for trying to explain things and do eternally. However complex subjects like double albinos, triple het, quad het, or possible co doms seems almost always misunderstood by most. The ones that do understand most of it seem to wanna have thier own version of what makes what. However soemtimes I can not reply instantly....I try ot think about these things without being rushed to get the best understanding I can. But...if your "opponenets" theories have any ground to stand on causing a doubt....people take it as "checkmate, game over, you lose" as if 5 minutes of thought buries years of research.

I do see ads and hear people throw around T Positive and Negative and double this n that and sure it is annoying when it appears to be a marketing scam. That does not mean everything attatched ot this temrinology is bogus though. That is why I replied. I know it was not the posts attention. But to some it may put some of this terminology in a negative light and this is hard enough to explain already

If I must I will write some explanations of my examples when I have time. Unfortunately I do not have much free time these days...maybe it is for the best This post is a summary compared tom my detailed responce Sorry for all the typos....busy busy busy
Envy Sonorans

Peanut Butter Brooksi

Striped Applegate

Double Albino Gopher

Tom Stevens
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TomsSnakes.com

Tom I did not intend to slam double morphs in general or suround them in doubt. Many are very nice and I'm looking into one now myself. The eNvy gophers you posted are a good example of an excellent project. Others however still don't make scence to me. Double albinos and unred red bull are dubious at best. As for the T thing I've asked almost every person claiming to have T animals and not a one I've asked has actually preformed the specific enzyme test need to factually make the claim. In this case its just widespread misuse of a term.

It's the copy cats, the people who try to capitalize on the unsuspecting newer people. Most hate to use Ball Pyhons for comparison but a great example is the Yellow Belly. It was true, many people had them in their collections unkowingly.....but many others were trying to be passed off as Yellow Bellys and I am sure many people got burned.
It can be a hard call. I have Snow Brooksi and a Snow San Diego Gopher that do not have pink eyes, yet Snows are a type of Albino?
Imagine one day we call all these snakes nothing more than Kings and every variant is simply named "morph". I know that's far fetched, and as I hope i mentioned in my previous post I really enjoy writing articles and I intend to write a lot this winter when things slow down. The only downside is people find one mistake in your work and you can take a lot of grief for it.
I think your post was a good one, people need to really think about this stuff, and if they're interested need to do thier homework and try and stay on top of all this....which is no easy task
Tom Stevens
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TomsSnakes.com

To be clear, you dont need to test for an active enzyme to infer that a particlar morph is T-positive. Since tyrosinase catalyzes the first two steps in melanin synthesis, if you see any tryrosine-derived pigment in it must have an active tyrosinase gene and thus is T-positive. But, what does that tell you? Not to much really, since there can be any number of different morphs with different apperacnes that are T-positive.

As for the double albinos, I dont really like the use of the term albino applied to anything other than amelanistic animals. In that sense I agree that if you had to two nonallelic amelanistics what would be the point of making a desinger double albino? (Maybe just to see what happens.)

But cool things happen when you mix amelanistics with other forms of "albino" (be they T-positive, hypos, or whatever). Look at ultramel corns and the paraglow and paradigm boas. Very cool looking snakes that you couldn't predict the apperance of until you did the cross.

Best,
Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

" if you see any tryrosine-derived pigment in it must have an active tyrosinase gene and thus is T-positive."

Good point. Guess I tend to look at things as classic albino or amel. One of the two strains of amel black rat was T and it was indistinguishable from the T- variety.

Man I got beat up on this post! LOL Thanks for keeping me straight.