Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my notes inidicate i held back the "pale" animal in the pic below because it was pale--not pale orange, but pale. so it may have been pale red as a hatchling--I'm searching for old pix in case i have any.

but in the meantime i'm wondering--that "pale" snake clearly has a lot of ontogenetic yellow--lots of hondurans gain yellow as they age.

And notice the brightest yellow is where the BLACK rings would be, so yellow is not just increasing in the mid-triad, usually narrow rings that can vary from white to yellow on tricolor hondos and to orange on tangerine hondos. Presumably even where the BLACK rings occur there's a layer of skin with the cells that can produce yellows and on some specimens, as on this pale one (and on the high-yellow albino in the post linked to below) it occurs to an extreme.

My hypothesis is that on the pale animal the layer is producing more than usual amounts of yellow coloration not only in the narrow & "black" rings but on the wide rings as well: yellow red = orange, so maybe the combination of those colors results in those wide rings being orange instead of red.

Unfortunately, i can think of two problems already with that hypothesis:
1) the high yellow in the post linked below still is bright red, not orange
2) i haven't seen wild types turn from red to orange as they age

so maybe the hypothesis should be revised to: ON ALBINOS when there's more than usual yellow produced as the animal ages, that yellow not only shows up in the rings that would be black on a wild type, but also in the area where the red rings occur, and the mix of yellow and red results in the animal turning more orange with age.

terry
(now, if only i can find a hatchling pic of that snake...)

link to high yellow example

Perhaps the yellowing is a result of the hypo gene that wouldn't normally be seen unless the specimen were also amelanistic?

That nelsoni appears to be deep red with bright yellow bands instead of black, instead of orange and yellow. That would also go along with the hypo effect because hypomelanism really doesn't affect the erythrin from what I've seen.

Are there hypo nelsons yet?

Hopefully it'll prove to be a hybino.

Just my thoughts, no one take them all too seriously as I am still somewhat of a novice.

Joseph
aka - Venom

Hey Terry,

I think this discussion falls somewhat into the catagory of the extreme hypo's we have been looking at. I think (JMO)we fail to look at the workings of MANY genes that control phenotypic expression in each and every snake. Some of these genes express themselves differantly but many time are not seen because black over shadows them. It seems obvious that there is a layer effect when looking at pigmentation on snakes. It seems to me that even though we may have recessive characteristics that are obvious to see we also have varying phenotypic expression among these layers controlled by a multitude of genes that in a normal animal would just go un-noticed or would be chalked up to "a cool looking" normal. How's that for a run-on sentence?? Anyway just some thoughts that probably don't make sense.

Matt Woodhall
-----
www.theselectserpent.com

>.... It seems to me that even though we may have recessive characteristics that are obvious to see we also have varying phenotypic expression among these layers controlled by a multitude of genes that in a normal animal would just go un-noticed or would be chalked up to "a cool looking" normal. How's that for a run-on sentence??

i agree, when viewing "morphs" we've got to allow for thke natural variation in the wild-type or "normal" animal, and realize anyi or all of those changes can occur on a morph, too, and have nothing to do with the morph, and everything to do with the natural variations of the ssp

>>Anyway just some thoughts that probably don't make sense.
they made sense to me, matt. should we both worry about that?

peace
terry