Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This hatchling normal has a belly that is approx. 1/2 patternless and 1/2 panormally patterned with the normal 'piano keys'. The body pattern is completely normal.

The sire is a motley corn that is het lavender.

The dam is a normal corn het for both motley and lavender.

The genetic breakdown for this clutch is:

1-lavender het motley
3-motleys 66% het lavender
4-normals het motley, 66% het lavender (including this oddball)

What I'm wondering is: Is this something genetic that can be inherited by future generation? How many other corn breeders have seen this and how common is this?

EVERY het Motley/Stripe I recall hatching has had patternless/interrupted belly patterns.

In 2005 I kept back two 66% het Mot females from a project clutch.
Of the 5 normal-patterned corns in the clutch(rest were Motleys), only these two had NO checkers on the first half of their bellies.

Well, both 66% females PROVED het Motley this year. Hmmm...

I'm guessing others have seen this in their own Motley & Stripe breedings.

Best of Luck.

BB

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"Have you hugged your drummer today?" --- Me

It isn't 100% as I have a 100% het motley right now that has normal belly pattern.

It would be interesting to see if there is a tendency though, like with bloodred.
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Arrrggg!
It's like Shalom, but for pirates.
- iCarly

None of the other normals that have motley siblings in any of the clutches I've produced have anything but a normally patterned belly. Only the mots have the patternless belly. This snake strikes me as odd because other than the 50/50 belly it is normally patterned. I've never seen this before. With a motley sire, the snake is 100% het for motley but that is a simple recessive trait and none of it should be bleeding through onto the phenotype of this animal, but half of the belly is patternless. What do you guys think?

It's possible that under certain condition, some otherwise simple recessive genes do not behave in a simple recessive fashion.

Several Cal King breeders have seen that with lavender and amel - breed them together and you get visual double hets (darker than homo form of either trait) even though those traits normally are simple recessive by themselves.

So our rules for simple recessive expression are not always strictly adhered to by mother nature.
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Arrrggg!
It's like Shalom, but for pirates.
- iCarly

belly pattern itself is not controlled by a single gene.

There are several genes that cause a lack of belly pattern, and I believe there is a gene that causes increased belly checkering, and even sometimes causes some checkering on homo motley individuals.

So while in some cases, a single gene can eliminate belly checkering, there seem to be multiple genes at play with belly checkering.
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Arrrggg!
It's like Shalom, but for pirates.
- iCarly

Thanks everyone for replying to this and shedding some light on the subject. I really hadn't considered the possibility of recessive genes not acting like recessives. Regardless of what's going on though, this snake is different than the others I've hatched and I'm going to keep it and breed it in 3yrs or so and play around and see if we can do anything with this. You never know until you try.

I meant to put this in the last post but oops.

I have seen a lot of funky belly patterns on some of my outcrossed bloodred babies with the incomplete dominancy of the diffusion. Several of the outcrosses I have hatched over the years have just a bit of pattern along the sides of the belly but it looks like someone took an eraser down the middle of the belly along the entire length. I've hatch enough like this to expect it from the outcrossed bloodred clutches but I was really surprised and curious when I got this baby from my lavender motley clutch with the 1/2 patternless belly and the 1/2 patterned belly....didn't expect that at all.

The parents are het motley and this snake has motley siblings but its body pattern is normal. That's what I'm finding odd here.

This is the same snake:

i breed alot of these.... i sell them as 100% motleys b/c i have an adult male who has a funky belly pattern (Henry VIII) and he is het motley... he is a normal male... classic looking on top but his mother is a miami with hets (obviously) I'm working on getting miami mots. using mother and (F1) son in breeding trials. i also have the mothers F1 daughter who will be good to breed next year... shes VERY colorful!!!
heres Emily (mother) and Henry VIII (son)

Heres Henry's sister Cassy:

BUT i did breed a hypo het caramel to a hypo het caramel BOTH partial zig zag and got 1 zig zag hypo het caramel with a normal belly pattern and 1 amber with almost NO belly pattern... i will be breeding the parents again next year....

heres the father(sorry not a great pic of zig zags):

heres the zig zag:

heres the amber with funky belly:

~kin
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~Sober Serpents~
www.freewebs.com/soberserpents
Corns, Creamsicles, A Black Rat, A pair of Leucistic Black Rat X Leucistic Texas Rat Intergrades, Thayeri, Cal Kings, A Jungle Corn, Ball Pythons, A reverse Trio of Candoia, Leopard Geckos, Green Anoles, a Snapping Turtle, a White Cheeked Mud Turtle, a Bearded Dragon, an Adult Rescue Iguana, and A Baby Iguana

Thanks for sharing. I was wondering how common this was. First time I ever saw it.

That's a nice funky looking little zig zag BTW.

thanks its one of my pride babies i hatched out this year... if you want i can take pics of the bellies, but they all look the same
~kin
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~Sober Serpents~
www.freewebs.com/soberserpents
Corns, Creamsicles, A Black Rat, A pair of Leucistic Black Rat X Leucistic Texas Rat Intergrades, Thayeri, Cal Kings, A Jungle Corn, Ball Pythons, A reverse Trio of Candoia, Leopard Geckos, Green Anoles, a Snapping Turtle, a White Cheeked Mud Turtle, a Bearded Dragon, an Adult Rescue Iguana, and A Baby Iguana

Thanks. No need to trouble yourself with pics. I'll take your word for it.

I have two clutches still at home, almost 20 snakes, who are all 100% het stripe (father is a hypo stripe).................they ALL are as normally checkered on the belly as any other normal I've seen.