Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I saw a baby BP at a store (the owner receives them as Captive Hatched from Florida where the guy Imports them)that had an interesting belly. Not a YB or anything obvious but I couldn't remember what marker it resembelled, think it resembles het for pied. It had a very wide clear belly and on the side of it there were black lines where the normal but high blushing started. Hope this explains it. I have seen it, besides on a YB but can't remember where. Can someone post one like this? I'll get a pic tomorrow.

Is this what you are talking about Bill? Het pied male...

I know there are a lot of bellies of het pieds that do not like this as well as the ringers but to me it is worth it to try. Especially if it is a female. I will go check and maybe buy it. Who am I kidding, I just need a reason to fill up some empty slots in my racks. But not a bad choice.

-Bill

Exactly. Do you have a full belly shot of your snake or a link that can get me one? Thanks. I really think I just need a reason to fill up some empty slots in my racks. does anyone do this?

-Bill

"does anyone do this?"

Wait...we should have a reason to fill empty slots in a rack? Now y'all tell me LOL. My favorite reason: "she was pretty and I wanted her." Good enough for me!

So, is the belly-strip thing a confirmed marker trait for het pieds? Cause I talked to a guy who has been breeding BP's for about 15 years now and he has several 100% hets that he himself produced that do not have the belly stripes.... Just curious.

Not all het pieds have it but it shows up way to often in hets and possible hets to be random. There is a similar situation with Burmese pythons where some but not all het granite and greens have the puzzle and cinnamon patterns respectively. I don't have an explanation as to why a morph would sometimes be a little co-dominant and the rest of the time recessive but it appears to happen. Perhaps it's more likely with a pattern morph.

So, given that some known hets don't have the pied marker the main question as to if it's still useful outside of examining known possible hets is how common it is in non hets. My opinion is that there might be enough random ch het pieds to account for many of the not from known pied lines animals with full blown three scale wide white belly with dark straight edge lines. However there may also be some non het pied and perhaps even non genetic look-alikes such as the ringer condition which seems to effect the belly also.

That is an interesting situation.... It seems to lean towards the possibility that the pied gene could be expressed at more than one gene location. If one location is the expression, a marker belly is visible in the hets.... if the other allele is the expression location, then no belly stripes are present in the hets.

Another possibilty could be that the stripe belly is an independant gene that just happens to be more common in the pied line, maybe due to restricted gene pool? It'll be interesting to follow the possibilities out in the coming breeding seasons to see how it pans out.

Personally, I'm hoping that the belly-stripe thing isn't a marker for pieds, but that's just from a selfish stand point. I have two poss. het female pieds, and neither one has the belly stripe, though one does have an amazingly clear belly pattern for about 3/4's of her body. Then, towards the tail, she develops black checks that are not in clear lines, but bleed into the belly scales sporadically. Despite not having the "marker" trait, I still have my fingers crossed...

Dave.

"That is an interesting situation.... It seems to lean towards the possibility that the pied gene could be expressed at more than one gene location. If one location is the expression, a marker belly is visible in the hets.... if the other allele is the expression location, then no belly stripes are present in the hets."

Are you talking about the same gene getting moved around on the chromosome? I heard about something like that but I think it was some special situation and not a normal thing to happen.

Or maybe the marker expression or lack there of is due to another gene location (i.e. a different gene altogether) that is sort of a pied helper gene?

"Another possibilty could be that the stripe belly is an independant gene that just happens to be more common in the pied line, maybe due to restricted gene pool?"

I think pastel is the only other mutation that has been outbred as much as piebald judging by all the possible hets seen so far (spider and other dominant types probably aren’t far behind). Piebald has probably been outbred for the same reasons as the consistently dominant type mutations - visible hets. At least the sporadic visible hets are an encouraging factor on top of the motivation of a high dollar morph that you want to be as strong as possible.

The way the belly marker has followed down into some of the 50% hets and down to half of their 25% het offspring it must either be the pied gene it's self or a very closely linked gene. Still doesn't explain the known het lines that don't have the marker.