Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am trying to figure this out.
Are the two genes on the same locus? and if so, what happens if a snake happens to receive one gene from the Orange Tail strain and another from the Salmon strain?
And if they aren't on the same Locus, how can one know if his BCI is both?

from my understanding the term "orange tail" and "salmon" is a line bred trait and nothing more. Some specimens of each are outstanding, and some produce very avg hypos. A salmon may produce a "orange tail" and vice versa. Everyone keeps their nicest looking animals and breeds them to achieve a desired look, but they are genetically the same. I could be wrong.

Mutations can mutate further. And from this thread alone you see that there's no 100% knowing.
I guess it's a matter of selective breeding as most of you mentioned. It seems to make most sense.

They are on the same Loci because they are the same thing really.
Salmon Boas are Hypo Boas, Orangetail are Hypo Boas.
Salmon and Orangetail are really Bloodline or Lineage names
So both are Hypo just different bloodlines.
. . . . . Lar M
-----
Boas By Klevitz
Boas By Klevitz

If orange tail and salmon are the result of the same gene, then the official name of the gene is salmon. Hypo is just a pet trade name. Assignment of a name in a refereed journal is the standard for making the name official. Ihle at al. gave their gene the name salmon in a paper in the Journal of Heredity, which is a refereed journal. There is a pdf of their paper on the salmonboa.com web site.

I do not know whether orange tail is the result of a single dominant gene, like salmon, or the result of selection. But for the sake of argument, let's say that orange tail is the result of a single dominant gene.

As far as I know, nobody knows whether the orange tail and salmon mutant genes have the same locus. I've seen claims on this forum that breeding the two together can produce an extreme effect, but that doesn't prove anything about whether they have the same locus.

Here's how to be as certain as possible that a snake has both genes. Take a boa that by breeding test has a 99% (or greater) probability of having two salmon mutant genes and mate it to a boa that by breeding test has a 99% (or greater) probability of having two orange tail mutant genes.

To prove whether the two genes have the same locus, a snake with both genes is bred to a normal snake. If any of their babies is normally colored, then the two genes do not have the same locus. If they have 17 babies, and none is normally colored, then there is a 99% probability that the two genes have the same locus. In my opinion, for greater confidence, the breeding should be repeated until the probability is 99.99% that the two genes have the same locus. And if the two genes do have the same locus, then my guess would be that they are the same gene, with differences in the strains due to different criteria for selection.

Paul Hollander

NP

Same mutation, different Lineages. Not confusing at all.
-----
South Central Herpetological

I'm going to join Lar and Eric in saying that they are just two lines of hypomelanism, unless proven otherwise in the future. It seems logical to me that when you breed two animals that have been selectively bred for great color that their babies would have even better, more extreme color. That doesn't make me think that there is anything more going on than color addition from selective breeding.