Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know different strokes for different folks, and I know that some morphs can produce snakes that boggle the mind, as do some hybrids, but for the life of me, I can't understand what the fascination is with bringing out a new morph, any morphs to the snakes we work with on this forum. I am not against it, I understand how exciting it can be to work with animals that throw morphs, but a black thayeri is just a color patterning in my book, like an MBK is to a splendida/holbrooki. What's all the fuss about bringing out an amel thayeri? Seriously? More than likely they appear in the wild, we will not know any time soon. I can see the stripe thing as exciting because I know that striped forms in some animals are not the norm, but not only possible, but happens more than infrequently. And as far as inbreeding, what other genes are we bringing forth? Could these other genes bring forth other peculiarities that are not the norm? Head patterns that do not line up with what is normally known? Of course! I am playing Devil's advocate on this one, I know that only a hand full of us have ever seen any of these animals in the wild, not me for sure, but even those have seen very little, so the pool to draw on is minuscule. Even if we own animals born from wild caught parent(s),we cannot know everything and put it on that neat little shelf! From one mountain to the next you are going to get some variation, and some are extreme! If these animals all came from a common ancestor, what's the beef? LOL, line breeding may eventually pop out something that resembles them all! I suspect the weirdest stuff may come from the newest animals put into the hobby, better than a fair chance...we should at least see some subtle and hopefully beautiful differences.
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Todd Hughes

I'm not a big fan of morphs. But there are about a hundred local variations and in betweeners out there from different locals that we don't have. A few of those could be available in the future maybe someday.

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Herp Conservation Unlimited
Conservation through captive propagation
Mexicana Group Directory
Photography by Joseph E. Forks

>>I'm not a big fan of morphs. But there are about a hundred local variations and in betweeners out there from different locals that we don't have. A few of those could be available in the future maybe someday.

Thayeri Alterna?
I think Thayeri and Alterna are alike in MANY ways.....
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John Lassiter

"Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part....."

I'm all about a natural 'tweener, just don't want to get into it at the breeder level until we get some for real from over the big swim! All legal-like. I know there are still a few opportunities for collecting, but until it happens, I'm gonna try and keep it as close as I can, lol!
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Todd Hughes

Hi Joe,

Would you call that a thayercana or a mexayeri? Sure looks like an intergrade to me . . .

Tom

It's a wild caught mexicana of some sorts
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Herp Conservation Unlimited
Conservation through captive propagation
Mexicana Group Directory
Photography by Joseph E. Forks

People push for morphs for several reasons.

I like to think the number one reason is because they are rare or something not often seen. Hatching out a new morph is the herpetocultural equivalent of collecting an animal that is extremely difficult to find.

Such morphs fall into two categories; gene linked heritable traits and those that just fall out of the expected norm. In the case of gene linked heritable traits the frequency of this gene in a population is not going to increase unless it confers some survival advantage in the wild or it is discovered and artificially selected for in captivity. Certainly line breeding increases the odds that existing traits might be discovered. For morphs that just fall outside of the established norms (pattern and color) I think the mere fact of a population being maintained under captive conditions greatly increases the odds of such animals popping up. For in stance it is not very common to find a wild eastern king with a crazy pattern yet they routinely hatch out in captivity. I'm not sure of the cause of this disparity but I suspect if has something to do with the artificial conditions we provide as well as removal of natural selection pressures. This is one of the reasons I've never completely bought into all the fuss over phenotype and locality status. A couple generations into captive breeding and I'm more surprised when significant variances don't pop up than when they do.

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“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Emmerson

"People push for morphs for several reasons."

People not only push for new morphs because it is the herpetocultural equivalent of discovering a new or rare species, but also because of the premium prices that new morphs can be sold for and the ego boost that goes along with being the first to produce them.

I agree for the most part with your comments regarding locality being irrelevant after a few generations of captive breeding, but I believe that some locality traits remain even after generations of selective breeding. Take for instance the Applegate (Huachuca) and Bauble (Santa Rita) and Ric Blair (Patagonia) reduced black pyros. They look nothing like the wild pyros found in the same location as the original breeding stock was collected due to the generations of line breeding for extremely reduced black. But, they do for the most part retain the low band counts common for SE Arizona pyros. It all depends on what the breeder selects for. If you selectively breed for the "wild" phenotype, it is possible to keep that locality look for more generations than if you selectively breed just "the pretty ones".

Look at pics of some of the wild mexicana. It would be hard to sell a lot of them as captive bred animals because they would be considered too ugly by most. The almighty dollar is the biggest decision maker behind selective breeding.

Greg

"It all depends on what the breeder selects for. If you selectively breed for the "wild" phenotype, it is possible to keep that locality look for more generations than if you selectively breed just "the pretty ones". "

Agreed.
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“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Emmerson

>>"It all depends on what the breeder selects for. If you selectively breed for the "wild" phenotype, it is possible to keep that locality look for more generations than if you selectively breed just "the pretty ones". "

Yep...selective propagation works both ways.....
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John Lassiter

"Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part....."

Keeping the "wild phenotype" look would honestly require that population to be harvested to some degree to keep that wild gene flow coming into captive breeding projects. But even then the sense of beauty that each breeder has will overrule that as well as the captive stock outpaces the natural stock in breeding collections.
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Herp Conservation Unlimited

If people really learn from their mistakes, I should be like the smartest guy in the world