Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have noticed we have some people with House Snake experience on this board so I was hoping someone can help me to understand the way house snakes pass on genetics and how phases like green, red etc are bred and act when interbred.
What I mean is this, If I wanted to produce a reverse Okeetee Corn or a Lavender Corn I can quickly learn the genetics at play from online resources. I will also learn that breed those two and I get normal corns that are het for lavender and het for amel and may display or not display some degree of "okeetee pattern". I am no expert at all but I can learn how this works and understand what is dominant and recessive in the corn world quickly. Just as I can with bull snakes, pythons, etc. Yet when it comes to house snakes I am clueless.

It seems perhaps more then simple genes to me as well. For instance I recently learned that you when you breed two lace pattern snakes together that you get about 75% that display the lace pattern to a degree. I am confused but happily accept the ratio as fact. This leads me to ask is Lace basically a form of hypomelanism that does not show every time even in some animals that are homozygous for the trait. Hence the 25% that don’t show. The reason I make this guess (hypo) is because the amels I have seen all show pattern making me believe the pattern is actually always there just that it does not show in most common animals but with hypo it would show. Am I nuts on that one? It is just a pattern that sometimes shows and sometimes doesn’t and have nothing to do with a true recessive trait like hypo.

Sorry to be so confused just trying to grasp the genetics at play and the only genetics I actually have experience with are corn snakes so that is what I relate to. To me it should be similar with any species. Leading to my next line of questions.

I understand there are the following types of House Snake Color Phases

Red
Cinnamon
Olive
Green
Brown (normal?)

I will leave out Striped? and Zululand? at this time and I know there are more.

My question is are these colors geospecific in the wild or are they recessive or dominant traits.

What I mean is if I breed a lavender and an amel corn that are not het for anything else I get normals. This I understand! Further I understand they are all het for both traits and if I cross breed the babies I get animals some that display characteristics of both lavender and amel, some normals and some displaying only one recessive trait.

Now let’s say I breed two green house snakes logic says if neither are het for anything else I get more greens but what if I breed a green and a red? Do I get all red? All green? Some of each? Some color in between both? Or all browns? (with brown being analogous to "normal" in the corn world) I just can’t figure that out and find no info on it anywhere.

What I would like to do is publish online info stating breed x with y and get z for as many combinations as possible.

IE breed Albino Reds with Reds Het for Albino you get 50% Albino Reds and 50% Reds Het for Albino. That I think I understand well enough what I am stuck on is combinations like

Green and Cinnamon. Would I get all browns that are double het for green and cinnamon? Would I get one color dominant over the other or some type of mix color between green and cinnamon.

Any help in putting this information together would be greatly appreciated,

Jack

Jack,

I don't the exact inheritance patterns of many of these traits, but I will tell you what I do know...

For instance I recently learned that you when you breed two lace pattern snakes together that you get about 75% that display the lace pattern to a degree.

This might depend on the basis for the ratio given. If it was based on a single pair of Lace snakes, they could have been heterozygous for a dominant "Lace" trait. In this breeding you would expect a 3:1 ratio of Lace to non-Lace snakes.

However, if it is always true (not just in one known case) that Lace x Lace gives a 3:1 ratio, then it isn't a simple case of a dominant allele. It might be that it is a codominant trait and that people just don't recognize the difference in appearance between homozygous Lace snakes and Heterozygous Lace snakes.

The reason I make this guess (hypo) is because the amels I have seen all show pattern making me believe the pattern is actually always there just that it does not show in most common animals but with hypo it would show. Am I nuts on that one? It is just a pattern that sometimes shows and sometimes doesn’t and have nothing to do with a true recessive trait like hypo.

Not a bad hypothesis. I will also point out that many baby house snakes show this Lace pattern anteriorly and darken up as they age. True Lace patterned specimens simply fail to darken.

I understand there are the following types of House Snake Color Phases
Red
Cinnamon
Olive
Green
Brown (normal?)

They can also be black, not just dark green. By the way, I think I came up with the name Cinnamon to describe a particular female I had a few years back. She was the result of breeding a red x green snake and then breeding the offspring to another red snake, so she was 25% green bloodline and 75% red bloodline. She was a really beautiful color, and someone at an expo who was buying one of her babies asked me what the mother looked like and I said she was Cinnamon colored.....and a "phase" was born. Ooops, my bad.

I will leave out Striped?

Actually, that may be one of the few traits (other than albinism) which is due to a single allele and would be inherited in a predictable pattern.

and Zululand? at this time and I know there are more.

My question is are these colors geospecific in the wild or are they recessive or dominant traits.

There really is no Red Phase, or Green Phase house snake. This is a species which varies in color throughout its geographic range. In some areas they tend to be reddish brown or even brick red. In other areas, greenish brown or olive colored snakes are more common. In still other areas, they are a dark chocolate brown or blackish color.

In fact, the red phase snakes we see today are really the result of people line breeding for the reddest snakes, since they are the most popular. I don't know if snakes that deep red are really found in the wild or not.

Now let’s say I breed two green house snakes logic says if neither are het for anything else I get more greens but what if I breed a green and a red? Do I get all red? All green? Some of each? Some color in between both? Or all browns? (with brown being analogous to "normal" in the corn world) I just can’t figure that out and find no info on it anywhere.

I bred my Cinnamon female (3/4 red, 1/4 green) to a very red male (the one on my website) and produced several clutches of babies. They were all about the same color, a reddish brown. They matured to fairly light tan snakes with a reddish hue. They were redder than the mother but not as red as the father.

what I am stuck on is combinations like Green and Cinnamon. Would I get all browns that are double het for green and cinnamon? Would I get one color dominant over the other or some type of mix color between green and cinnamon.

The latter situation. The snakes would be more olive than the cinnamon snake, but more reddish than the green parent. Basically they would probably produce a tan house snake.
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Chris Harrison

OK I am getting this now! Thank you so much. From the few bits of input I have got from others it seems all cross pheno type breeding with browns yields a type of tan.

In selling offspring I would guess most people would consider tan brown so it seems the best course is to breed color to color most of the time. IE red to red and green to green and selectively cross and back breed to further enhance the chosen trait.

In any event it seems the issue is more complicated and more simple then I made it out to be. More complicated because I can't product browns that are het red and het green and get a clutch with greens, reds, browns and green/reds. More simple because it is realy just a phenotype issue and if you want bright red just breed red to red and keep selecting the ones that have the brightest red.

Yep I get the whole they are basicly normals with the Phenotype merger thing. Say I got a northern and southern corn and bred them the result is a merger of phenotypes with no big degree of clear way the offspring will look.

Same with House Snakes right the colors

Red
Green
Olive
Brown
etc.

are all normals none of them are the result of a single trait but a combination of genes.

So tell me this if I breed greens to greens do I always get greens as in 100 precent of the time get them with the exception of a hidden recessive like Amel.

I think I have it Chris I am just happy to discuss this finaly with someone who will help me and knows these answers.

Could we IM back and forth some time I have AIM Yahoo and MSN if you have any of these just email me your IM I would love to chat sometime. My email is jack@providetechnology.com

Thank you again so much,

Jack

Not to add confusion to this issue, but keep in mind that besides any breeder (color terms) the brown Housesnake and the olive are two different (but very similar looking) species.

Lamprophis (Formerly: Boaedon) fuliginosus= Brown (or red)

Lamprophis inornatus= Olive or Black

And then there are at least five more...

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."