Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is red phase a recessive gene or co dom, or what. I never have done much with hognose and am curious since I have a red phase male and have been recently blessed with a wc western that looks to be a female if the dimorphism of males and females is an accurate way of telling. She is 18-20 inches in length. Was interested in possibly trying to breed my male to her next year. He is 12 inches long. I know about boas and pythons somewhat more, but am lost on the western hog nose. Any help?
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1.0 pastel columbian
1.0 100% het albino columbian
0.1 Guyana red tail
0.1 albino Burmese
1.0 granite albino Burmese
0.1 granite het albino Burmese
1.0 red phase western hog nose
0.0.1 wc normal western hog nose
1.2 jcp
1.0 irian jaya
1.2 normal balls
1.1 pastel balls

np

Can't do pics yet. At work and I don't have a photo bucket or anything. I need to get with the program. Lol!
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1.0 pastel columbian
1.0 100% het albino columbian
0.1 Guyana red tail
0.1 albino Burmese
1.0 granite albino Burmese
0.1 granite het albino Burmese
1.0 red phase western hog nose
0.0.1 wc normal western hog nose
1.2 jcp
1.0 irian jaya
1.2 normal balls
1.1 pastel balls

Red phase is a line-bred trait. It is not recessive or co-dom.
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Greg Jackson

I too have a red phase, and a red/blonde phase...

Unfortunately, it is not a true color morph, or even a trait. You get the red color by breeding red-ish normals, and then breeding best colors of their offspring and so on and so forth. If you breed a red with a normal, you will probably only end up with slightly redder offspring...just a bunch of nice looking normals...

If you were to breed the red with a red/blonde though, the babies would be MUCH nicer looking and worth a fair price more.

This is the only exception (that I'm aware of) to the red color as a trait: http://extremehogs.com/ExtremeRed.html and those snakes are albino.
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3.3 Western Hognose
1.1 Ball Pythons

Unfortunately, it is not a true color morph, or even a trait.

Actually, both those statements are incorrect. Red coloration in Hognose, such as the Extreme Reds and Extreme Red Albinos, are in fact a true color trait which makes it a type of morph. Where your confusion lies in the fact that you are comparing these to simple Mendelian traits such as Dominant, Co-Dominant and Recessive traits, which is not what this red coloration is. What the red coloration has been understood to be so far is a polygenic trait, otherwise known as a line trait. In order to understand what a polygenic trait is, you need to understand what the word itself means, poly- (many) and genic (genes), meaning "many genes". In other words, it's not a single gene (as in dominant or co-dominant traits) or pair of genes (as in Recessive traits) that cause coloration but a combination of many more genes which makes these traits far more difficult to reproduce unless you do line breeding (inbreeding) to help keep the lines pure and unchanged.

You are correct that one must inbreed specific colored animals to try and keep these traits intact although it's not always necessary.

This is one of the problems with the Extreme Red Albinos, a lot of people believe that the red trait is linked with the Albino gene and that when they breed their Extreme Red to non-related/colored animals, that those animals will also be het for the red gene, but in actuality, it will only truly be het for the Albino gene as well as carrying the genes that also made it red, but it doesn't mean that those red genes will come out in F1 or F2 offspring unless the genes that go into making the red are passed along by both parent animals or you get lucky. This is why you don't see too many people producing Extreme Red Albinos even though a certain individual has been producing and selling a lot of them for many years. If the red gene were a simple Mendelian trait, then we'd be seeing a lot more after all of these years.
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

lets not forget these types of traits in all snakes may also be controlled by being multi-allelic. Just to make things more confusing lol. Plus when I spoke to my college professor, which i took a genetics class, she laid a list of other situations even more complicated. At that point I punted on trying to fully understand what the genetics of a few snakes and more on how they were created.

Again very nice post.
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Thanks for reading.
Tom

www.HerpZillA.com
HerpChat

Thank you kindly Tom!

lets not forget these types of traits in all snakes may also be controlled by being multi-allelic. Just to make things more confusing lol. Plus when I spoke to my college professor, which i took a genetics class, she laid a list of other situations even more complicated.

You are absolutely correct! There are many traits that are far more complicated than we currently comprehend, but many are prone to declaring traits and/or morphologies as simple Mendelian genetics based on just F1s or F2s when in actuality, there could be a lot more at play. Only years of selective breeding, research and above all, prudence, will gain a true understanding of how a lot of these traits work and what they actually are.

Thanks for adding further insight to such a complicated and often misunderstood topic!
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

I love the topic of genetics. Mainly I love learning. It would be interesting if KS had a genetics forum. The topic floats here and there thru other forums. But it may be interesting to see herp people explain how the terms are used. I don't think there is really a true standard of usage across other critters? Like Co Dom for boas may mean something and maybe for birds it MAY mean something else.

While on the subject, how close, or hard is it for gene mapping for herps? I can see some day a DNA sample may prove lineage for herps. Very cool to think about IMO.

>>Thank you kindly Tom!
>>
>>lets not forget these types of traits in all snakes may also be controlled by being multi-allelic. Just to make things more confusing lol. Plus when I spoke to my college professor, which i took a genetics class, she laid a list of other situations even more complicated.
>>
>>You are absolutely correct! There are many traits that are far more complicated than we currently comprehend, but many are prone to declaring traits and/or morphologies as simple Mendelian genetics based on just F1s or F2s when in actuality, there could be a lot more at play. Only years of selective breeding, research and above all, prudence, will gain a true understanding of how a lot of these traits work and what they actually are.
>>
>>Thanks for adding further insight to such a complicated and often misunderstood topic!
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>>Troy Rexroth
>>Rextiles
>>
>>
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Thanks for reading.
Tom

www.HerpZillA.com
HerpChat

I appreciate your correction on the matter. I was simply parroting what I'd heard from another breeder (e.g. what I understood to be true). I am however, glad to be corrected on the subject.

Genetics is certainly a fascinating subject! I wish my genetics class had been more geared towards snakes though. I don't know nearly as much as I would like to know, and have a hard time finding stuff.

Thank you for explaining.
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3.3 Western Hognose
1.1 Ball Pythons

I appreciate your correction on the matter. I was simply parroting what I'd heard from another breeder (e.g. what I understood to be true). I am however, glad to be corrected on the subject.

You are truly welcome! I thoroughly respect your humility. Not a lot of people like being corrected and many choose to ignore the findings or ideas of others and just continue along their merry way while continuing to misinform many others which becomes a vicious cycle. While I make no claims as to being an expert on any particular subject, I am well read as well as being open-minded enough to also listen to other ideas. Case in point, less than a year ago, I was challenged on my usage of the term Albino instead of the more proper Amelanistic by one of my friends/peers. While he could not himself properly explain why Amelanism was correct and Albinism wrong, I took it upon myself to do extensive research which ultimately led me to fully comprehend and understand, that not only was his assertions right, but why they were right and thus I was able to explain in detail to him what I learned as to why he was correct.

The bottom line is, we can all learn so much from each other when we have open minds and spend the time and effort to research and have such discussions over these matters. Genetics, and the understanding thereof, is a very complex matter and yet so many of us use genetic terms in a lackadaisical way without fully comprehending their definitions and what is actually applicable or not.

As a community, we really need to have more discussions and consensus on the usage over many of these terms. Unfortunately, too few show any real interest.

Let's keep up with these kinds of discussions!
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

"Not a lot of people like being corrected and many choose to ignore the findings or ideas of others and just continue along their merry way while continuing to misinform many others which becomes a vicious cycle."

I interned in a zoo's reptile department for a while, and during my time there one thing was made clear. It's better to admit you don't know, than to spread incorrect information, and if you accidentally tell someone something incorrect, you apologize and make corrections. I tend to do this naturally, but really took to it in the zoo setting, as I find there are often many misconceptions to clear up.

And there are so many ridiculous things out there about snakes that I'd rather ditch my "pride" and admit my mistakes than risk having one more insane story spreading out of control.

While I doubt that would happen with genetics...it's still good to actually have accessible and correct information out there.

I agree there should be more topics on stuff like that. I myself would love to know why amelanistic is better than albino. And for those of us just starting out with breeding, any info on genetics is invariable helpful. I find most of us starting out are in credibly underinformed.

Example: I had no idea that anery/axanthic was a simple recessive trait until I asked Greg Bennett about it while inquiring about his 100% het pair (which I'm in the process of buying). All I knew was that the albino was simple recessive, and I'd read somewhere about anaconda being co-dominant.

Ha. Here I go, rambling again. Anyway, I agree with what you said, and I hope we can get more discussions on stuff like this in the forums.
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3.3 Western Hognose
1.1 Ball Pythons

I myself would love to know why amelanistic is better than albino.

It's not that using Amelanistic is better than Albino, it's actually about correct usage of the terms. Albinism is used when an animal has no color pigmentation at all, hence the white coloration. To be an albino, an animal must have no skin pigmentations such as melanin (black), xanthaphores (yellow) and erythrophores (red), this in turn would create an all white, albino, animal. Unlike certain animals (humans for instance) that typically only have melanin to define skin pigmentation, snakes can have all 3 pigmentations (plus a few others) that create all the wonderful colors present. Now, for example, let's take a typical "Albino" Western Hognose. Obviously, "Albino" Western Hognose are not white as we clearly see yellows (Xanthaphores) and usually accompanying reds (erythrophores). Being that the yellow and red coloration is present shows that the animal is not a true albino. Amelanism on the other hand is generally defined as being an absent of melanin, which these Western Hognose in fact are, absent of melanin only.

Here's a wonderful article that explains this more in depth: Link

Example: I had no idea that anery/axanthic was a simple recessive trait...

Here's another misused pair of terms, Axanthic and Anerythristic which are often used interchangeably. Neither term is the same as the other and despite my best efforts to share over the years what I have learned with these posts(Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4), some stubbornly still continue to use, IMO, Anerythrism incorrectly.
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

Hey guys! Thanks for the answers and clarification on my questions. I have been pretty tied up lately, and I'm glad to have such a response to this matter. I am also happy to state that the w/c animal is doing great, and has taken three small toads today ranging in size from a half inch to about an inch long. I was very pleased to see this in a w/c specimen that has been captive for less than two whole weeks. I am revising my size assessment as well. It looks to be in the range of 15-17 inches long. Due to the super strong feeding response today when opening the enclosure, I will try to get a more accurate measurement at a later date. Thanks again for all the help.
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1.0 pastel columbian
1.0 100% het albino columbian
0.1 Guyana red tail
0.1 albino Burmese
1.0 granite albino Burmese
0.1 granite het albino Burmese
1.0 red phase western hog nose
0.0.1 wc normal western hog nose
1.2 jcp
1.0 irian jaya
1.2 normal balls
1.1 pastel balls