Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Frank earlier this year I told you I had a female knoblochi that was a proven breeder. I had loaned her out for a year and when I got her back she was somewhat thin so I did not breed her this year. After fattening her up she appeared to have gotten gravid without contact with a male this year and I asked you if it was possible for her to lay a fertile clutch from sperm storage. Well she did not lay anything so was almost certainly just ovulating. Just thought you might be interested since we had talked about this.
Now the question. I have been told that melanism in thayeri is a simple recessive trait but I would like a second opinion or answer because a freind of mine bred a normal(I forget if it was milksnake or leonis) male thayeri to it's melanistic mother and it resulted in a clutch of four normal leonis babies. So in your experience what is the method of inheritance for melanism in thayeri?

I am not Frank,
But I do remember a year or so ago a person breeding a melanistic thayeri to a milksnake phase mate of different lineage. His resulting offspring were intermediates......These intermediates looked like REAL dark milksnake phased thayeri. I don't know if these darkened more with age or not....Actually, I have never seen a solid black thayeri as a neonate. I know thayeri go through a slight ontogenetic change that involves them speckling out somewhat...mostly with grey or black (melanism).
What I don't know is how the gene works. I, too have been told that it is a simple recessive gene, but I am not sure about that.
Also...A buddy of mine Mike Kochvar (mexicanamak) bred a melanistic thayeri to a white leonis.....The resulting offspring were intermediates as well. There were real dark MSPs and grey (black and white make grey) ground colored leonis. I think the trait must be co dominant not simple recessive......
I guess I have to get a pair from Mike and find out for myself...

Another strange observation that I have witnessed is that nearly all melanistic thayeri, when held in the right light have a banded or milksnake phase pattern...I have heard of, but never seen in person, a few leonis phase melanistics...again pattern can only be seen in the right light (usually flourescent lighting)....

I wonder what Mr. Retes has to say about this.....
John Lassiter

Tharyi come in hundreds of colors and to think they are suppose to come out resembling the parents is naive. If you have an extreme expressed trait, like a super lite one. The simple chances of recieving another is extremely rare, when outbreeding. Of course you will recieve intermediates. And with tharyi, individuals you had no idea would occur.

In order to understand what your recieving, you must know the exact history. In this case its not an ontogenetic change, Black tharyi are born black tharyi. When they first hatch, they may have barely visable markings or not. As adults few have barely visable markings, but most were pure black.

I often think most tharyi breeders now-a-days, are extremely spoiled and naive. In fact, most wild tharyi are Bung ugly, and the common color is dark. With ugly grey being very popular. Of course the great interest was in the ones that did not fit this bill. The nice ones were of great interest.

With that in mind, its the nice ones that became the breeding stock in captivity, not the ugly ones. So I imagine that when they pop up here and there, people are very surprised. But I think its only to be expected.

To understand this better, genetically, these snakes produce a range of colors and patterns, this insures success under a varity of prevailing and changing conditions. In captivity, we can inbreed lines and clean them up to a certain point, but we never have created pure lines. That is, milksnake tharyi do not alway produce milksnake neonates and buckskins do not always produce buckskins, there is always some variation. I do imagine if we keep line breeding them, the percentage will get higher and higher. But people often feel the need to outbreed, which starts this silly game all over again.

So unless you have knowledge of the exact longterm history of your animals, making prodictions about color and pattern is about like spitting in the wind. It certainly will come back and hit you in the face. Cheers FR

Yes....Thust the name "Variable kings"
I have never forgotten that Frank....
I love the variability and the enability to predict offspring pattern and color....
It is just like X-mas in the summer at my house when they hatch...
John Lassiter

The genesis of Black tharyi came from Bill Garska and I. He captured two normal tharys in an area, I captured a female black tharyi in that same area. I bred mine to normals and recieved hets, that is, no blacks, I bred the hets back to the mother and recieved a percentage of black babies.

Bill bred his wildcaught normals and recieved normal babies, he then bred them to eachother and possibly back to the parents and recieved some black babies.

In my case, the hets should when bred back to a pure recessive, produce 50% blacks, they did. In his case, He could only hope to recieve 25%.

So in your case, you have two possible carriers, you like bill can only hope to recieve 25%, which indeed may not show up in that small a clutch. Remember these are only percentages. So, you could produce 75 normal appearring individuals in a row, then recieve some blacks and that would still be within normal predicted range.

To think that you have to recieve 1 black in four is very naive of the understanding of these types of percentages.

The long term production of hets, one does indeed recieve some very odd results. For instance, I had individual females that constantly beat the odds and produced continiously higher percentages of albinos than they should have. Also I had individuals that continiously never reached that predicted percentage. Yet in combination, they did indeed fit nicely in the predicted range. I felt that was odd, but then no one said, how this was suppose to work. Again, The longterm overall prediction of results fit nicely, yet did not from individual to individual, it did not.

I hope this helps. FR

That helps alot. So you and Garstka started the black ones, that's cool. The reason I was asking is because I do not see many black ones around anymore and I was lucky enough to get an adult female from John Hollister, who got it from the Hammacks, who produced it from stock they got from Bill Garska. I wanted to know if I got babies from her if by breeding those babies back to her I what my chances were of getting melanistics out of the breeding and I can, very exciting. Thanks alot.

>> a freind of mine bred a normal(I forget if it was milksnake or leonis) male thayeri to it's melanistic mother and it resulted in a clutch of four normal leonis babies.

maybe i'm overlooking somethign but if the melanistic phase WERE a simple recessive, there'd be nothing odd about getting 4 normal loooking offspring from a pairing of a melanistic mother x a normal father...that would in fact be the expected result. they'd simply all be het/melanistic. So not sure what prompted the question.

peace
terry

>> a freind of mine bred a normal(I forget if it was milksnake or leonis) male thayeri to it's melanistic mother and it resulted in a clutch of four normal leonis babies.

I should have said a normal "appearing" male. I don't know if you got this part "bred... to it's melanistic mother". In other words son back to melanistic mom would mean he should be a het, if the trait is simple recessive and by odds with 4 babies resulting there should have been 2 melanistics, 1 normal and 1 het produced. Of course I do understand that with a small clutch like that it doesn't mean anything conclusive however it did make me want to ask what others experiences were.

..Terry a mutual friend bred a melanistic thayeri to an albino ruthveni and got all (4-6?)melanistic looking babies.
Should that have happened??
:Mark

Its very predictable when theres a known history. That is inbreeding. Specially with recessives. But when outbreeding, your only expressing the known, with one individual, the other is totally unknown. which means you have no idea what to expect.

I once bred a albino gopher(ariz) to a wild caught oddball striped gopher(ariz) the offspring including albino striped gophers. The answer is simple, the striping had to be con-dominate and the stripe wild caught had to be het for albino. In the exact way as the albino. What were the chances of that???? FR

That is certainly partly what keeps some of us intrigued in the hobby. The unexpected. If we knew everything it might be a bit boring (not just herpetoculture) huh?
:Mark

The unexpected is another term for fun. FR