Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello Group,

We have an unrelated pair of Pueblens that are both 100% het hypo.

I am just trying to understand if this a a Dominant, Codominant or Recessive gene, or something that you have to prove out through breeding?

Please help us understand this.

Thank you,

Justin

In milksnakes, hypomelanism is a simple recessive trait. The trait's occurrance in campbelli is a source of debate among "milkheads", and is often asserted to be due to "borrowing" some genes from hondurensis.

-Cole

Hello Cole,

Thank you for the explanation. Also, does that mean that if a Campbelli is het for hypo that somewhere along the line, one of it's ancestors was breed with a hondurensis? Or there was some crossbreeding that happened generations ago?

Justin

There are a number of prominant milkheads who feel that the hypo campbelli are really a product of forced intergradation between campbelli and hondurensis (= someone bred their Pueblan to their hypo Honduran). In that case, the hypo Pueblans wouldn't be "Pueblans" but campbelli X hondurensis crosses. Others, however, feel that the trait arose in natural campbelli, without the crossing. I have yet to be convinced either way.

-Cole

Apparently I shouldn't be typing this stuff on my Blackberry...

Sorry about the spelling and punctuation issues.

-Cole

Cole, I can squash the myth that the hypo gene was barrowed from hondos.
Last year a buddy of mine bred a hypo campbelli to a hypo hondo and got 100% of the clutch normals.
nuff said.

But, I do know another guy that bred two snow hondurans together and produced all amels!LOL.... there was rumor a couple years ago that John Lambert had a different line of anery or axanthic hondo from the U.K. and I guess it was true.
I have tried and tried to track them down but they have switched hands several times now and its a dead end.
I would have loved to isolate that second anery gene and see what it looked like in its pure form.
Oh well......

L8r Shannon

p.s. my same friend that did the test cross also crossed the amel nelsoni with the amel hondos and got all normals.
Best part is he through all the muts in the deep freeze.

Thanks for sharing the info, Shannon! I'm really glad to hear it!

-Cole

LMAO.....Always a catch huh.
There are two lines of hypo puebalns out there.I have them both and next year my buddy is going to test the other for me.Its from the bells but I don't think its linked to the hondo gene either.Will know in about 8 months though.
just for the record, the amel gene in nelsoni and cornsnakes is compatible.LOL... go figure.....

L8r Shannon

p.s. here is a little Pike I caught in MT. last year.Love the swan river man.

Nice pike bud!

I wonder how far down the river I would have ended up if I caught this lunker on your boat..LOL!

~Doug

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Thanks for the info., man. Do I dare ask what became of the known Pueblan X Honduran hypo cross neonates?

The Swan is pretty cool, isn't it?! Nice Pike! Next time you're up this way, you've gotta make an effort to get over here.

-Cole

Nice Pike, what'd it eat for you?

You know I don't see many of those types of hats (railroad workers hat, a.k.a. Elmer Fudd hat) to often. But here in Montana, I see them worn by many people. You're a brave man Shannon. And you'd fit in here in the Big Sky State just fine.

-Dell

I am thinking that some are quite possibly very genuine, while others in the hobby definitely are NOT. My common sense tells me that these two VERY common milks have been bred together countless times by people in the past. It only makes sense to me that this has to be the case. And of course not with just this cross, but many countless others in the hobby as well.

Heck, when you see things like Campbelli x ruthveni x thayeri x Cal king, it only seems logical to me that TONS of two-way milk crosses are out there.

Hell, we both see stuff like this on a daily basis now

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

I am quite relieved to learn that with as fast as the hypo campbelli are spreading through the market, they're not all some wacky cross.

-Cole

I hear ya loud and clear Cole!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Doug, your common sense is a bit off so please stop the fear mongering. LOL. Just because a couple people dont honestly represent their snakes you shouldnt cast doubt on a line that many people paid decent money for and have kept "pure" for a decade. I had a really neat PURE yellow rat colony with 3 genes at work in them. Bubblegum rats came out and I couldnt move a single snake even though I could trace grandparents back to WC on both sides! I let the line die out rather than deal with people who think everything is a cross! You wouldnt want someone calling your locale stuff crosses would you?

It should be pointed out that it is a theory not held by many people. The defunct Southern Reptiles was one of the line founders and basically who ever is questioning the morph does it by Chris Cullota's reputation not by any known facts. No one has ever test bred the gene to see if they are compatible and no one has ever admitted to being the first. The first hypo campbelli showed no signs of any such crossing and the size of adults remains the typical size of a Pueblan. Pueblans max out at 4' and "hondos" at over 7' so I dont think it likely. "Hondurensis" morphs have been bred and crossed into many lines from the beginning, and the italics are there for a reason. At least one of the founder morphs was reported to be a different ssp. which pretty much invalidates all "hondurensis" in the hobby. Personally I believe this question was brought up by "hondo" breeders as a smoke screen. Hope this helps.

You're right, not much to go on.........

I don't buy any of that for a second Jeff. Yes, it IS rather strange that they just sort of "magically" appeared out of nowhere into the hobby though. But that is still not to say that there are not, or cannot be genuine Campbelli hypos out there, because there could very well be. Some yes, certainly not all of these are the real deal.

Now the length you refer to could easily fall into the "slot" size of a Campbelli x Hondo cross. How many 7 foot Hondos does anyone have?, or do you know of.....not many, I can safely tell you that much. However, there are literally countless hundreds of thousands of Hondos in the 4 to 5 foot range out there, that is exactly the size I would expect a Campbelli x Hondo cross to basically be anyway. Another thing is that "hondurensis" didn't even start out being intentionally crossed with anything, the people from the very origin of import couldn't tell you an abnorma from a freakin hondurensis if you paid them, so they were grossly misidentified from the very beginning. The import politics were just like anything else. They say they are from here, when in fact they came from many places in Latin America, and were sold OUT OF location "x" for import simplicity, just like many other things in this world are..LOL!. Diamonds are like that too, if you don't "know" their origin, you sure as hell cannot tell where they came from once they leave the point of origin.

Your statement about the Hondo breeders bringing this up as a "smoke screen" doesn't hold any water either. Only very uninformed folks could possibly think for one second that ALL milks from Latin America could ever be "pure" anything!....much less just hondurensis. Latin America is a very big place, and for anyone to think that all milks with triad rings and a snout band can only be hondurensis is living in a dream world.

Fact is, people cross all sorts of crap, and I know there HAS to have been many people that also got the bright idea to cross hypo Hondos into campbelli as well a long time ago. Surely you do not think they are all the "real deal" out ther, I don't see how that would be even remotely possible now. Jeff, certainly you know that there are hodge-podges of just about everything imaginable out there, and to say there cannot be any of these hypo Hondo x campbelli crosses out there is just not realistic at all to me. All I know is that I was never one of these people!, because if people didn't DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE, it would never have to be an issue to begin with, but they DO, so it IS!

Now I am thinking that there could be some genuine lines of these hypo campbelli out there, and I am also quite certain that there has to be plenty of "counterfeit" crosses as well. Given breeder's "track records" around the country with all the crosses that they do, this only seems 100% logical to me. I have been around enough decades to know this is the way it is done....simple as that really.....sad , but true as all hell!

Don't see how it can be argued when I see people posting unknown crosses and advertising them ALL THE TIME on a daily basis..LMAO!!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Doug, to argue everything is a cross because no one saw it happen is just as foolish. Whoever THEY are, I assure you there are a hell of alot more of US than THEM. Know what I mean? For that matter, you can say the same thing about all Pueblans! There were very few wc pueblans EVER collected, the ssp. was only discovered in the 80s right? The Hypo Pueblan in the 90s? There just werent too many people with these until recently. Their purity was never questioned until this year I think right?
Now I dont know about you Doug, but I'm getting a little tired of the generation of tire kickers we have created that look for "purity" and worry about what happened to a gene 4 generations ago. Dont get me wrong, its nice when exact lineage can be traced back but even then you are taking the word of the breeder. I think the best you can ever do is look at the snake, hope to look at the parents and talk with the breeder. There are no prizes for being more pure or more honest, it is strictly on the honor system. To my knowledge no one has ever done it using hypo, doesnt mean it hasnt happened, sure. My guess is that hybrid vigor would be noticable(like with Eastern/goini/Florida kings)and the offspring could be more distinct. But lets start going on what we know instead of what we dont, ok. What we dont know is far too much right?? LMAO

Oh, but Jeff, I DO know of some interesting things regarding this, but me bringing it up in any detail now after all these years would be beating a long dead horse as we all know. Believe me, I bite my tongue and just let many topics be that I see regarding lots of things. Like I said before, some might very well be the genuine article, and some look very wrong to me phenotypically. This of course in conjunction with other interesting little tid-bits I know from other's personal conversations.

Okay, enough of that then......

Now do you mean to tell me that you couldn't find a getula, a goini, or floridana with any "vigor"?, so you had to cross the three to get some "vigorous" offspring??..LMAO!!

Mine all chase me across the floor........I would definitely call that "vigor"!, and surprisingly enough, they aren't three-way crosses!

Anyone can come up with reasons to cross stuff, and boy, they certainly do. The bottom line is are they actually GOOD responsible ones??, or just excuses to bring up whenever the argument presents itself?

I think I will regret ever mentioning this, but this has always been my outlook on this for many years. and every single breeding year, my stance on this gets stronger and stronger because of what I continually see.

~Doug
-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

It's not a theory, but a hypothesis. A hypothesis that Shannon's info. indicates is incorrect (at least for a portion of the animals). However, I seem to remember the last time it came up on the forums, there was a significant faction of people who were adamant that the hypo Pueblans were crosses. My apologies if I spewed incorrect information.

As for the size issues, I'd have to disagree. Look at "Corndurans" and those "Brooksi X Nelsoni" things. It's all over the board and size doesn't seem to matter. Hell, you should see the size disparity between some of my syspila pairs!

-Cole

Like Cole said, hypo is a simple recessive genetic trait. Breeding two known hets togather will give you 25% hypo offspring, 50% het for hypo offspring and 25% normals.

Though there will be no way to visually differentiate the hets from the normals - they'll all appear normal.

Tim

Third Eye

Thanks for the breakdown in what we can expect for offspring.

Also, since our 2 non related Pueblans that were born this year and are 100% het for hypo, how could that be determined if there is no difference in appearance between a snake baby het for hypo and their normal siblings?

Or were both of their parents either het and proved out making all their normal appearing offspring 100% het hypos? Or else maybe the parents visually displayed the hypo trait and these were their normal appearing offspring?

Am I on the right track here?

Thanks for the help,

Justin

Phenotypically normal offspring can be determined to be heterozygous ("het" for a trait only if one of their parents' was homozygous (showed) the trait. For example, if you breed a hypo to a normal, all of the offspring will appear normal, but carry the hypo gene (be "het" for it). If you breed a hypo to a het hypo, you'll get some hypos and some normals. All of the normals in this second scenerio will be hets.

However, if you breed two hets, you get the ratios Tim indicated above (25% hypos and 75% phenotypically normal animals).

-Cole

Cole, I thought I was stupid prior to reading your post, now I KNOW I am stupid. LOL. I really need to study up on this stuff now that I have some "het for somethings" in my collection. Never needed to worry about it before as I only kept "normal" snakes. Damn it, now I have to read!!! LOL.

You're sharper than you give yourself credit for, amigo! When are you coming to MT?...

-Cole

That's exactly what I was going to tell Joe. He will have no problem understanding it at all, once the basics are under the ol' belt. Everyone I know started out somewhat intimidated by it at first, but then later learn it is really quite simple.

ROCK ON Joe!!, uh, ....I mean..READ ON Joe!!

Joe, print this out from Terry Dunham's website. It will help you out, and you can refer to it whenever you aren't quite sure about a given breeding scenario.

~Doug
recessive genetics

-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Thanks Doug. I will do just that!! Been keeping these darn things for thirty plus years now, but never had to deal any of the breeding issues associated with genetics and traits because up until five or so years ago I released ALL of them. ( With the exception of the 15 foot python---I let that go in the glades-----------KIDDING FOLKS, JUST KIDDING.)

You will see how simple it is after you get the basics down, guaranteed man. it is really just like matching things that are identical, or alike. The other traits that are involved with any pair of breeder snakes that are NOT alike, and are odd by themselves, the offspring would simply het for that particular trait.

LMAO!!, the python comment was awesome man!..HAHAA!, certainly glad you were kidding too!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Oh, I would love to make that trip my friend. Maybe I can get something worked out with Mitch and we can all go have a blast!!!

Do I look fat in these genes?

Hypo Puebs - nice trait, look great as babies and adults.
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Mark