Reptile & Amphibian Forums

...how do the genetics work on striping? It's not a simple recessive, so can a CK be "het" for striping?

Thanks,
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Diego

It's a dominate trait, so there can't be hets.
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Muhammad Ali

I am not sure if the term dominate or ressive applys to the genetics of striping.

The reason I say is is, I have caught gravid banded kings and their clutch included stripers, therefore stripers were not dominate). And visa versa for that matter, in this case, gravid banded kings produced some stripers, again, striping cannot be dominate or the whole clutch would be striped.

Also, the genetics appears to be local specific. For instance, when I pioneered several of the current calking morphs. We found that breeding different locals produced different results. Like, breeding a San Diego striper to a Oregon banded, resulted in checkered offspring, first time out. While breeding a San Deigo striper to a San Diego banded, often produced striped offspring and banded offspring. Then breeding those second generation offspring produced abberants.

ALso, the northern populations of stripers(New Porters, black tailtops) Produced totally different results then San Diego Stripers, when bred to the same female.

The above results indicated that striping was not a pure ressive like Albinism. Nor was it a pure dominate like normal patterns(both striping and banding and abberants) When bred to a pure ressive like albinism.

Yes, you can also breed a striper to a banded and recieve stripers, but then the next generation does not produce the same results, it often results in abberants.

The same goes for banded types, When I first started with kings, I lived in an area of bandeds and also collected desert bandeds. Stripers were rare for us. So we often bred bandeds to stripers and striped offspring were not common. So saying its dominate is very misleading.

Even the term Co-dominate is not accurate, as the these traits are effected by the local genotype(unseen genes)

If I remember correctly, you do a lot of collecting, and if you also do a lot of breeding, you should have some experience to share.

Remember, I have been breeding these wonderful snakes since 1964, and have produced some dang gene type for every year since then. In some decades, in large amounts(kinda like Kerby). What this means is, I have seen a lot of "different" results from the same "question". The question is, is striping dominate. The real answer is, yes and no, depending on local and what other local its bred to. Cheers

Thank you, FR. Do you have pictures? In my own VERY LIMITED experience, I bred an albino striper to a normal, wild type banded female and this is what I got:

A friend of mine bred a striper much like "Dweezil" in the thread below to a banded female and got this:

It seems that they visually express the pattern traits of both parents to a small degree and that the striping is more prone to show up on the tail. Once again, these are just my observations on TWO pairings. I'd love to see the results from you guys with years and years of experience.

Thanks,
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Diego

I did a similar pairing years ago and got thin bands with some incomplete. I used a run-of-the-mill albino striped pet store Cal king to a banded coastal Cal king. Neither king had a particularly wide stripe or bands, and not real thin either.

Then I took that same male albino stripe and bred to a black & white female. The babies were banded and looked B&W at hatching. When adults, they had a beautiful milk-chocolate color with striking light yellow bands. Super pretty kings.
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Mark

both babies are beautiful!!!!
~kin
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~Sober Serpents~
www.freewebs.com/soberserpents
Corns, Creamsicles, A Black Rat, Thayeri, Cal Kings, A Jungle Corn(Just A Pet), A Ball Python, A Bearded dragon, Leopard Geckos, Green Anoles, a Snapping turtle, and a white cheeked mud turtle

56456
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Diego

Once you are talking about animals that have been captive bred for several generations all bets are off. Even if a snake looks like a nice simple banded, or a perfect striper, you don't know the genetics that went into it and you can basically get ANY combination of patterns.

This has been discussed on this forum before (search please) and the bottom line is that it has only been studied a few times without conclusive results. The pattern of cal kingsnakes is not simple enough to be explained by your basic Mendelian genetics and I seriously doubt that anyone actually known the basis for the wide range of traits seen today.

Thanks, FR. I was going by what I was told but what you explained really clears things up.
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Muhammad Ali

i have no clue... but.... last year i bred a female albino stripe to a high white reverse spotted...
eve

Wishbone

together

their offspring... (only 2 of 3 eggs hatched) BEWARE 1 is deformed....

Kabookie:

Lumpy:

~kin
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~Sober Serpents~
www.freewebs.com/soberserpents
Corns, Creamsicles, A Black Rat, Thayeri, Cal Kings, A Jungle Corn(Just A Pet), A Ball Python, A Bearded dragon, Leopard Geckos, Green Anoles, a Snapping turtle, and a white cheeked mud turtle

Hey man that's pretty crazy. Do you know what causes that?

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Muhammad Ali

the deformity?? i have no clue... but i bred them together again this year just to see.... and Lumpy is just fine.... its a lil boy... hes a lil pig!!! eats pinks like no other!!! while his sister Kabookie is on fuzzies... if i get more deformed babies, i'll try to breed the parents to other snakes to see if its the mother or father or just a fluke(which this years breeding will tell) Lumpy only needs help shedding sometimes, but i dont mind... i love him just the way he is... its nice having something different...
~kin
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~Sober Serpents~
www.freewebs.com/soberserpents
Corns, Creamsicles, A Black Rat, Thayeri, Cal Kings, A Jungle Corn(Just A Pet), A Ball Python, A Bearded dragon, Leopard Geckos, Green Anoles, a Snapping turtle, and a white cheeked mud turtle

The striped mutant gene is inherited as a dominant. In other words, all striped babies have at least one striped parent. No babies from a banded x banded mating would be striped.

You can have a het striped king snake. A snake with a striped mutant gene paired with a normal gene is a het striped snake. Such snakes exhibit a range of patterns, but none of them are normal (normal = all bands). The striped mutant gene seems to be pretty variable in expression; it's not all or nothing. Other genes probably modify the result, too.

Richard Zweifel did a paper on the problem -- Genetics of color pattern polymorphism in the California kingsnake. Journal of Heredity 1981; 72: 238-244

Paul Hollander

5646
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Diego