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Up until this Spring there had been no "extreme-stripes" produced from non-related breedings and although numbers were not completely supporting it I thought last year that the extreme-stripes might be "super" of a codom' trait.(One of the '09 poss het T-snow was a "chainlink patterned, but born dead; I had thought largely the effect of the "Aztec-like het pattern" combined with the heavy circle-backing of the sire.) Since I was getting both the very light "T-positive mimics" with and without extremestriping, I had thought it possibly a super or homozygous recessive probably separate from the stripe gene. Numbers of the "T-positive mimics" also did not conclusively support being a "super" or homozygous recessive. I got a very, very nice example of extreme-stripe from breeding to a totally unrelated non-striped snake in my first litter this Spring proving it to be simple dominant, and just one of many possible expressions of the Mayan gene. So, going back to my original belief of what a Mayan is, the numbers pretty much add up that the "T+ mimics" are all the hypomel-like and hypomel/hypoerythristic (what I call "smoke" that are also true hypomelanistics. The Mayan is a "jungle-type" gene (not to be confused with the Swedish line jungles) in that it produces both color and pattern variances, some of which are more extreme than Swedish jungles...especially colors. Markers are similar to jungles (light eyes often with red, orange or amber tint, broken head spear, pattern aberrancies, line of purplish speckles on sides, holes/bubbles in pattern, etc.) I do not believe there is a visible "super," and thus there MAY also not be the genetic problems/sterility associated with super jungles. Color variations range from slightly hypermelanistic to hypomelanistic (even to the point of having a complete pattern wherein the black is visibly non-existent; appears to exist as precursors to black much like T-positive albinos), and from high red/orange/yellow to hypoerythristic (even to the point of being virtually a visible "ghost" with slight pale pinks/yellows), and every possible combination in between! Pattern can be visibly normal, jungle-like zig-zagging, extreme dorsal striping, reverse striping, Aztec-like blocky patterns, circle-backing, ladder-tailing, or any combination! From the few litters I've produced it seems that the more striping an individual has the more likely it will throw better and more stripes in litters it produces; same with the extremely light color/"smokes." Some of mine do have some Hog Island in the ancestry, but some do not....locales involved influence color to a degree (those with 1/4th Hog ancestry are brighter colored than those with 1/8th), but have no effect on the striping and pigment reduction. That is: You get Mayans no matter what you breed to the original Mayan Nicaraguans. So, it is NOT just because there's some Hog Island in them; if so, the sunset/het sunset producers would be over-run with them! Because of the extreme reduction of reds in some individuals I think it's going to be very interesting when bred to bloods, super Marrons, etc. Since the "T-positive mimics" do not dull out and darken hardly at all as they age, it is thought that it will eliminate this trait
(the "leaky gene" in morphs such as VPI and BW Caramels, so that they retain the beatiful juvenile colors! Because of all the variety of colors and patterns involved it has taken time to get this far with the genetics. It would have been easy to fixate on one particular color or pattern and work to prove that alone as codom or recessive, while ignoring the "low-expression" examples that did not fit with my expectations. You are free to disbelieve what I'm telling you, and insist this is no morph, but it will not change the facts

I wish everyone working on proving out genetics of their possible new morphs luck in their endeavors, and encourage them to continue despite the onslaught of negativity that seems to surround anything new coming to market in the boa world.

These are 1/8th Hog Island percentage (from breeding het sunset cross Mayan Nic to El Salvador het pewter):



These have no Hog Island (from breeding Mayan Nic to Nic X Cancun het T-positive Snow):



To see animals from various litters:
http://s991.photobucket.com/albums/af33/DeHartsAnimalEnterprises/2011Mayanvarious/?albumview=slideshow

"I wish everyone working on proving out genetics of their possible new morphs luck in their endeavors, and encourage them to continue despite the onslaught of negativity that seems to surround anything new coming to market in the boa world."

It would help if it looked like their were actually something "new" about them genetically .
From what I've gathered over the many months of these so-called "genetically diverse" Boas that your working with ("Aztec-like het pattern","T-positive mimics","super","hypomel-like and hypomel/hypoerythristic","smoke","jungle-type","virtually a visible "ghost",ect . . . ) - they've come full circle and are so far out their genetically that they appear as normals, and Hypos. At least that's how they look in your pics . I'm so sorry , but I see no difference from any other crossed Boas. None of the genetic catch phrases apear in the pics that you show us . And that's why you have a hard time getting people to believe that any of this is real.
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Snake room janitor

From the pics you have posted and the info you have given i see nothing but a lot of mixed locality mutts with nothing really going on, maybe that’s true maybe it’s not but until you document this better people are going to find it hard to understand what you’re getting at.
How about showing us what animals where bred to what there offspring in the goo then maybe some pics on their own explain what traits you where breeding for and what result you had.
Also from your post there is around 5 or 6 different traits you are working with that nobody has ever heard of, you need to separate them and document them all separately one by one showing us breeding and results.
Once you have done all this them maybe we will be able to see what you’re seeing instead of getting our brains all mashed up looking for aztec like jungleish t maybes.

I'm honestly not sure why it's so hard to follow...it's proving to be dominant with exactly the same kind of variability of color and pattern as true/Swedish jungles only more extreme. I've provided pics in the past or links to pics and people seem unwilling to follow links. I've been told it's an effect of Hog Island genetics even though there's no Hog genetics involved (the same way in which a recent thread discussed true/Swedish jungles "looking like" they have Peruvian in them even though they are not known to have Peruvian in them) in some litters, and I get the same pattern/color effects. I've contacted producers of sunsets/het sunsets to get their input as well, and although some Mayans resemble some Hog crosses (the way some jungles resemble Peruvian crosses) color-wise, the Hog crosses do not produce all of the Mayan traits and in a dominant fashion. There are other morphs that have been on the market for some time with still as yet unexplained aspects and nobody seems to question those----mine/Mayans, have pretty much been explained. I just don't see your problem with it. All of the various appearances (I prefer "appearance" to "phenotype," because it's so variable that the phenotypes blur into one another; also, I'm pretty certain that although the specific appearances can be bred for to have better consistency in producing them that they will not breed true to be individual morphs) are the effect of one genetic morph....pretty simple, once you've eliminated the possible recessives and possible supers as having shown up in F-1 out-crosses. I am going to breed to see what happens in the future with aztec-like to aztec-like, extreme-stripe to extreme-stripe, etc., and also to see what happens breeding the "T-positive mimics" together. I've been working with this gene since 2005, and have produced inbred, out-bred and line-bred litters and observed the outcomes. I have no doubt that the gene is dominant. The true/Swedish jungles also produce difficult, if not impossible to visually identify, low-expression examples that must be bred to prove carry the gene. Here's a few examples of the more noticeably Mayan that have been produced:

ok i can see that you are producing some beautiful arabbent hypos that do apair to have something going off gentic or not i dont no right now, Which leads my to the problem........
We really need to see this made a lot more simple

example....

In 2000 i bred dam ______ to sire _____ with pics of both
then pics of them breeding
pics of the birth
pics of the babys
number in litter
break down in numbers of the diffent morphs

if you can do this simplly for all your breedings it will be a lot easy for people to see your results and help see what is going on.

can you really not see why people are not willing to give you the time of day when your post are so complicated and full of alsorts of info.

we really just want to see pics of the adults pics of the baby and as much simple info you can give us

In the first few breedings, much like everyone else, I figured it was a relatively common "aberrant gene," and that the odd light color in the original litter was due to being part Hog. So, I did not keep detailed records. Subsequent litters (outbred) colors were also mostly attributed to the multiple locales involved, although it was extreme enough in the poss het T-positive snow litter for me to inquire with Mr. Stone if there were some kind f "hypo" in the ancestry I wasn't aware of. It was only last year when I had multiple inbred/line-bred litters producing extreme-stripes, T-positive mimics (a couple look remarkably like Russian blondes to me now) and some with both traits, that I thought I definitely had something interesting. When I started trying to document the various "phenotypes" it was all over the place; some look jungle, some look Aztec, some look jungle-Aztec, some look anery (but turn out not to be), some look normal (but turn out not to be/"smokes" can look pretty normal at birth but can look similar to VPI or BW-Caramel at a year old). Honestly, after having posted on the forum last year, and getting the remarks I got, I gave up on trying to explain by record-keeping. I was told it was too confusing(in a round about way). My wife says I'm too windy on these forums??? So, the gist is that you can get extreme stripes, "smokes," "jungly/Aztec-like/reverse-stripes, semi-stripes, aberrants, fine-line-type, zig-zags, etc.," from breeding one Mayan to anything! Should that anything be a hypomelanistic, you may also produce the T-positive mimics that are hypomellish/hypoerythristic Mayan "smokes" that are also hypomelanistic (as well as speckled hypermel-hypos, paraglow or BW-glow-like, sunset-like, etc.). I've produced paradox hypos in litters tracing to the mother of the original litter, and hope there's a genetic component to that. All indicating it's dominant. I will let everyone know if I find out otherwise.

I completely agree that something like what's written below should be done. And in SEPARATE POSTS, not one post!

>>In 2000 i bred dam ______ to sire _____ with pics of both
>>then pics of them breeding
>>pics of the birth
>>pics of the babys
>>number in litter
>>break down in numbers of the diffent morphs
>>
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What's written above is purely my opinion. In fact, MOST of what you read on the internet is someone's opinion. Don't take it too seriously

Jonathan Brady
DeviantConstrictors.com Site received a complete makeover! Check it out!

I'm not posting this to be a smart ___. I'm posting it to honestly try and help you.

You may find some information here (hyperlink) to be helpful. Being able to logically, and coherently explain to others what you're seeing is likely the largest hurdle you're facing at this moment.

I have been known to ramble... a lot! But, I've never written a run on paragraph even half of the length of yours. It gets tiring, mentally, to not have a break every couple of sentences. It's also not a good idea to put two separate ideas into one paragraph as that too, gets confusing and mentally exhausting.

Finally, I understand that you're trying to illustrate what you see by comparing it to something well known. But I would be scared to walk anywhere near you because I'd be too worried about tripping over all of the names you've dropped.

Seriously, my recommendation would be: if you have to put "-like" at the end (ie, jungle-like, aztec-like, T-positive-like), don't do it. Instead, describe, with adjectives, what you're seeing. Hell, use a basic photo editing program to draw some arrows on your pictures.

After you get a handle on all of these things, THEN come back and share with us what you've produced.

Honestly, I am intrigued by (what I think I remember as) the chocolate dilutes... or T-mimics... or whatever they were (see, too many names dropped and I'm all confused). The borders around the tail saddles did look to be a brown-purple color. It may or may not be something genetic, I have no idea. But I did think it was pretty.

jb
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What's written above is purely my opinion. In fact, MOST of what you read on the internet is someone's opinion. Don't take it too seriously

Jonathan Brady
DeviantConstrictors.com Site received a complete makeover! Check it out!

You make some valid points. I originally thought the "Blue Moon line" and "Mayan line" were likely the same kind of morph (because of certain similarities in some offspring) and figured the overall color tone differences were due to the different locales involved. I've always referred to the two lines separately when referring to them individually and always under the same "Blue Moon" or "Mayan" name. But, back when I belived they were the same morph I tentatively referred to them all as "varyiable pigmentation gene." On my PhotoBucket pages you will see some still labeled as such...I have nothing to hide; it's part of the history of what I now belive to be two totally separate morphs that just occasionally produce similar offspring. The breeding results in 2010 implied it possible that the pattern morph could be separate from the color morph (if so, it seemed most likely double codom to me because of "visible hets," but numbers produced in possible supers/possible recessive homozygous of each did not prove or disprove) so you saw me using "Mayan/Chocolate-dilute," or "Mayan-stripe/chocolate-dilute." The litters in 2011 proved what I thought to be possible supers in pattern to be simple dominant, and numbers on colors produced indicate what I believed all along that those having both hypoerythrism and the same reduction of black as in true jungles, and also those like this that are also expressing the true codom hypomelanism gene are those looking like T-positives. I have always called this line "Mayans," and that is my intent. Although it seems to me to be a Central American "jungle" gene, there's no point in confusing the matter further by actually calling them that. I've never bred to Swedish line jungles to see what happens, although I think it may be very interesting if the genes are not "compatible" and are instead cumulative in effect. Problem being that it will be virtually impossible to identify which is Mayan and which is jungle, or even which are both if no noticeable double-dose effect occurs. Since the really good light Mayans are lighter with less visible black than T-positive Colombians combining thse genes should produce the lightest and cleanest T-positives ever produced. I have only bred to the T-positive Nicaraguan gene so far in albinos. I'm expecting the same kind of effect to make the blood-Mayan a very interesting and unique(hot pink and tangierine is what I'm thinking) morph

The "possible paradigm effects" that I got in a small number of the '09 outcrosses (poss het T-positive snow litter, and Mayan X Blue Moon litter)are now looking to be just really light examples of the Mayan gene and it's affects on the locales involved.

Could I ask one thing. Could you please post a picture of each of your "morphs/phenotypes" with a simple sentence explaining what it is? For example, I am yet to see a picture of anything that resembles an Aztec, or a T positive/Boawoman caramel. I see a bunch of aberrant patterned boas that are the result of numerous locality crosses. some are light, some are dark, but nothing stands out to me as being a defined heritable phenotype yet that warrants all of these confusing posts.

Warren
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Dr Warren Booth / Director USARK
North Carolina State University
Department of Entomology

Firstly, I was not asking for anyone's approval, or a general consensus, but telling you how the genetics have thus far proven out for me. I'll admit that my grammar has likely suffered since high school in the early '80's, and also that I profess to have no special photography skills; that is, provided that you admit this public forum is no science journal that requires proper grammer, scientific documentation, etc.

In the past when I posted I was told it was "too confusing" to give a detailed account of breedings, and criticized for "name dropping" in my descriptions. If you are on a "boa forum," I'm going to assume you have a fair understanding of what is and is not the visual concept defining the more common individual morphs. Therefore I am going to say "aztec-like" or "jungle-like" instead of redefining each individual morph (and, I'm sure, being criticized for leaving something out, defining wrong, mispunctuating, and being even more confusing, etc.). If you have no concept of what the common morphs are then you have no real input into morph issues, in my opinion. Because of the similarity to Swedish jungles, in that there can be offspring falling into rather "normal" parameters, some may only be categorized as "possible Mayans" until breeding trials prove them out. Litter pics will only show those visually Mayan (thus far people largely seem to be ignoring the same type "markers" indicating what is and is not a "jungle" that are virtually the same as in Mayans), and if you have the mind-set on the outset that there's only "polygenic mutts with common aberrancies," then I'm sure that's what you will allow yourself to see (especially if you don't have clear concepts of what other morphs are). I could say the same thing in regards to Swedish jungles---a recent thread proved that others besides myself see similarity in those to Peruvians (which also commonly have a widely varying coloration and dorsal aberrancies)----except that I understand and accept what the original breeder said about their genetics.

I will be posting more pics, but I'm not spending days jumping through hoops just to keep a few people happy. My results from years of breeding, from multiple litters both inbred/line-bred and outbred are that it's a dominant gene with variable pattern and color. Your belief or disbelief, approval or disapproval, will not change those results

Hi,
You may not want to take the time to take accurate photos that actually depict what you are trying to say. You may not want to put together a short, concise description of each animal/phenotype, etc. But, in that case, do not expect people to welcome your posts with open arms. I have lost count of how many "likes" I see in your posts, but I never see a picture to back it up. What on earth does your "Aztec like" animal look like, what about the "Mayan". What is it? Personally, I see a lot of aberrant patterns boas showing the color variation one would expect when they are the result of numerous local crosses and back crosses. Then again, who knows what is what because we never get an accurate short description with a photo. We get directed to a photobucket page with pictures lacking descriptions and out of focus.

I would love to think you actually had something that was worth the long winded messages and "likes" that you give, but there is no evidence to support that you do. If anything, it detracts from any project and its value.

Warren
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Dr Warren Booth / Director USARK
North Carolina State University
Department of Entomology

Sorry to tell you this, but it looks like nothing but normal type stuff with some creative names. Lol...
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Richard Ceniceros

Show my your normals that produce virtually full body dorsal stripes in some offspring when bred to anything. Show me your normals that produce various shades of hypomelanism including having a full pattern with zero black (all black pattern replaced by purplish-chocolatey color presumed to be precursors to melanin) even if they are high percentage Hog Island. Show me your normal hypomelanistics that are dead ringers for blonde T-positives. Show me your normals that do all of this inherited in a dominant fashion.

Thats the point that warren is making your not really showing us yours, you make it impossible for us to see what you are saying.
I would love for you to be on to something but until you take the time to just show us with the info i previously asked i just cant get my head around any off it.

Im sorry for calling the normals, i meant nice striped and aberrant boas.

Nothing out of the ordinary though, but your are creative with your funny names.
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Richard Ceniceros