Reptile & Amphibian Forums

If I breed a motley albino to a sunglow motley, what would be the outcome? Wandering if the motley trait is simple recessive or codom/dom and what combination produces sunglow?

ALso, why are there people posting motleys that don't seem to have the connected pattern of a motley the fulll length of the body? Is the motley trait similar to hypomelanism in the fact that it can have variance in the way it is expressed? Is the stripe trait like this as well?

Thanks,
Robert
-----
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
Ralph Emerson

....I did that this year......got amel motleys.......

some look better than others......technically they are all "het for sunglow" or whatever......especially if hypo was used to make the sunglows.......

some good some better colors.....

as for patterns of motleys.....yes...they vary alot.....some have no connected saddles....some are fully connected.....almost with stripes.........

........

have fun
.
.

-----
.........12 days and counting.............oops.........

yep.......I did that too.............

........

Motley is a simple recessive gene, that is recessive to the wild type, but co-dominant with stripe. It does vary in its expression, even in the homozygous animal, and connection of the saddles is not a fool proof indicator either way for the gene.

Sunglow is 99% of the time, a selectively bred trait that is not tied to any recessive gene other than amel. So, if you breed a motley amel to a sunglow motley, you'll get 100% motley amels, and some of them will tend toward the sunglow end of the spectrum.

I say 99% of the time to take into account the possibility that your sunglow is also homozygous or het for hypo. I have heard for years that there were some breeders who were using hypo to make their sunglows. However, I have never heard who that was exactly, and I have never seen any proof that this ever took place. Even if it did, the likelihood that you have one such animal is very small indeed.

Hope that helps...
-----
Darin Chappell
Hillbilly Herps
PO Box 254
Rogersville, MO 65742

Yeah that helps a great deal. Very strange though that the motley gene would be codom with the stripe gene and recessive to wild type.... that has me somewhat confused. Is stripe a recessive? And if you breed a striped animal to a motley animal do some come out striped motley even if niether one is het for the other? Amazing how genetics throw so many twists into breeding.
Thanks Darin!

Robert
-----
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
Ralph Emerson

>Yeah that helps a great deal. Very strange though that the motley gene would be codom with the stripe gene and recessive to wild type.... that has me somewhat confused. Is stripe a recessive? And if you breed a striped animal to a motley animal do some come out striped motley even if niether one is het for the other?

Most known genes come in two forms, the normal and the mutant. Amelanistic mutant gene and its normal allele are located in one spot in the corn snake genome. And the anerythristic mutant gene and its normal allele are located in a different spot in the corn snake genome. So crossing an amelanistic snake to an anerythristic snake produces normal babies. Because the amelanistic snake has the normal allele at the anerythristic mutant gene's location, and the anerythristic snake has the normal allele at the amelanistic mutant gene's location.

The striped and motley mutant genes are at the same location in the corn snake genome. IOW, as far as we know, there are three different forms of gene that might be present at this one location in the genome:

1) Normal
2) Motley
3) Striped

As genes come in pairs, there are 6 possible pairs that can be made from these 3 alleles. In the list below, "//" stands for a pair of chromosomes. The allele name on the left is the allele on one chromosome, and the allele name on the right is the allele on the other chromosome. After that will come what the snake looks like.

1) normal//normal -- looks normal
2) normal//motley -- looks normal
3) normal//striped -- looks normal
4) motley//motley -- looks motley
5) motley//striped -- looks more or less intermediate between motley and striped
6) striped//striped -- looks striped

Both motley and striped are recessive mutant genes because they are recessive to the normal allele. Motley is codominant to striped (and vice versa) because the heterozygous individual is more or less intermediate between the striped parent and the motley parent.

If a motley corn is crossed with a striped corn, then the motley corn contributes a motley gene to each offspring, and the striped corn contributes a striped gene to each offspring, producing all motley//striped babies. As motley and striped are different alleles, just as motley and normal are different alleles, the babies are heterozygous. By convention, "heterozygous motley" means that the two different alleles are motley and its normal allele. If an animal is heterozygous with two mutant genes at a single location, both mutants must be specified, as in "heterozygous motley//striped".

Clear as mud?

Paul Hollander

So when you say that the motley gene is codiminate to the stripe and vice versa you mean basically that it is co-existing at the same place but the normal alele is still the one that is presented as far as appearance is concerned? Or do the het motley/striped individuals actually show a mixed pattern between the two traits? That is what I thought a codominate trait was. One that was passed on to the next generation to about 50% of the offspring when bred to a normal or wild type and to 100% if both parents display the codominate trait which would also make it possible that some of the offspring could be dominate.

Am I grasping what you are trying to tell me or am I way off base here? I do know that it is possible for a recessive trait to produce a codominate "het". Like in the ball pythons they just proved that the mojave and the platinum are codominate traits but also are heterozygous for leucistic. That's why I became confused about the motley trait being codominate to the striped trait. They are both recessive but together they become codomiante? Or are they just coexisting at the same spot? Like the double het for snow boa. Where it is het for albino and anerythristic and when bred to another double het you produce snows? Since motley and stripe are pattern anomolies I am assuming that it will work a little different?

Thanks fore the reply and helping me understand this!

Robert
-----
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
Ralph Emerson

There are some aspects about how motley and stripe interact with one another that seem a bit fuzzy once you get into the very specific details, but let me give you the thumbnail veiw of the matter for your consideration.

Both motley and stripe are simple recessive genes in relation to the wild type, which produces the normal ventral and dorsal patterns. However, because it apepars that both genes are found at the same location (locus) on the DNA chain, when the two genes are found in one animal, they are double heterozgous for motely and stripe, but because those two simple recessive genes take up BOTH possible gene locations, there is no normal gene to cover up the effects of either the stripe or the motley. So, you get an animal that shows a combination of stripe and motley effects. It is genotypically het motely and het stripe, but it is phenotypically a stripe/motley corn, with no normal patterning.

So, the motely and stripe genes are each simple recessive to the wild type, but co-dominant (or co-recessive, if you prefer) with one another. That means that the following can be expected:

Motley x normal = 100% normals het for motley
Stripe x normal = 100% normals het for stripe
Motley x stripe = 100% Motley/stripes (double hets, showing combined mutations)
Motley x het stripe = 75% normals het for motley and 25% motley/stripes
Stripe x het motley = 75% normals het for stripe and 25% motley/stripes
Het motley x het stripe = 93.75% normals (with each one being independantly 50% chance of being het for motley OR stripe) and 6.25% motley/stripes

Of course, all of this is confused by the fact that there have been some evidences from certain breedings that simply do not compute when compared to what we should be able to expect from above. So, all of that may be out the window in the future. But as of right now, I think that this that I have outlined is about as good as we can understand what is happening in the stripe and motley genetics.
-----
Darin Chappell
Hillbilly Herps
PO Box 254
Rogersville, MO 65742

!
-----
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
Ralph Emerson

>So when you say that the motley gene is codiminate to the stripe and vice versa you mean basically that it is co-existing at the same place but the normal alele is still the one that is presented as far as appearance is concerned? Or do the het motley/striped individuals actually show a mixed pattern between the two traits? That is what I thought a codominate trait was. One that was passed on to the next generation to about 50% of the offspring when bred to a normal or wild type and to 100% if both parents display the codominate trait which would also make it possible that some of the offspring could be dominate.

We have a pair of chromosomes. The motley locus is at the same location (locus) on each of the two chromosomes. X marks the spot:
----X----------
----X----------

If both Xs are the normal allele, then the snake is homozygous for the normal allele and is normal.
If both Xs are the motley allele, then the snake is homozygous for the motley allele and is motley.
If both Xs are the striped allele, then the snake is homozygous for the striped allele and is striped.
If one X is the normal allele and the other X the motley allele, then the snake is heterozygous for the motley allele (het motley) and looks normal.
If one X is the normal allele and the other X the striped allele, then the snake is heterozygous for the striped allele (het striped) and looks normal.
If one X is the motley allele and the other X the striped allele, then the snake is heterozygous motley/striped and looks more or less intermediate between motley and striped. Note that there is no normal allele at the motley locus in this snake. And this snake is not double heterozygous, which means heterozygous at two loci (the plural form of locus). This snake is heterozygous at one locus.

The terms "dominant", "codominant", and "recessive" make a comparison between two alleles. "Motley is a recessive mutant gene" is just a short way of saying that the motley mutant gene is recessive to the normal allele. This is fine if there are only two alleles, but in the motley/striped/normal set, there are three alleles. So we have three possible comparisons of two alleles -- motley vs. normal, striped vs. normal, and motley vs. striped. If no comparison is explicitly stated, then the comparison is always to the normal allele. IOW, "motley and striped are recessives" means that both motley and striped are recessive to the normal allele. While "motley is codominant to striped" makes an explicit comparison between two mutant alleles, and the normal allele is out of the picture entirely.

I assume that you understand how heterozygous motley mated to heterozygous motley produces
1/4 normal
2/4 heterozygous motley
1/4 motley.
Ideally, heterozygous motley/striped mated to heterozygous motley/striped would produce
1/4 motley
2/4 heterozygous motley/striped
1/4 striped.

Unfortunately, as Darin wrote, we don't understand how motley and striped do what they do, and the lines are pretty blurred between the three categories.

Paul Hollander

!
-----
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
Ralph Emerson