Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Keith, I think you said you wanted to see fresh pics of the little one, well here they are.

The pattern hasn't changed, except.....if you look hard in a couple of the pics along the first 1/3 of the body each black scale is gaining the yellow spot. I'm going to go ahead and ASSUME this snake is going to be a very high percent yellow when mature. I guess we shall see.

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That looks a lot like what Manny was calling the Checkerboard. That to me is very interesting as I have a feeling in a locale or two these very well may become a little more common. It is really a great looking snake. If I remember correctly Manny said that his came out of some normal/het albino stock he was working with and he definitely had Albino Checkerboards. If you have the one from Manny and the one you just produced is the opposite sex you should keep the pair and breed them. It would be a cool experiment. Tom Stevens

I agree....
That snake is looking awesome!
Raise that hatchling up and breed them if they are a pair...i would love to see someone else out there with some checkerboards....
I wonder what a whitesided checkerboard would look like Tom?
I know the white on the sides go WAY up, but maybe you can tell a difference......maybe in a couple years we can find out, eh?
John Lassiter

If Matt is correct and it is co dom we may find out what a White Sided Checkerboard will look like next year, and they'd all be het Amel too, I hope my male is up too it. He has a lot of ladies waiting for him. Tom Stevens

I just read that below.....
Sounds like a cool plan...
John

I have often wondered if the checkerboard king was a wild phenotype of a certain locale that happened to pop up in a captive program. If that be the case, then there is a population of them somewhere.

This is what I think based on what I have seen and evaluated. The checkerboard king is in fact a true co-dom morph that effects approximately 50% of the offspring. I base this on the fact that of the clutches I observed in Daytona, there were no in between animals. Either they expressed this extreme variant phenotype or they didn't. Anytime you cross different locale types of the same species there are usually types of both extreme in the clutch, including in betweens. If I bred a multi-speckled LA king to a heavily banded MS king(which are never multi-speckled from my experience) then I'm sure I would get a huge variance of offspring.

These checkerboards seem to either express it or not, and the ones that don't do not carry it. That leaves it to possess a co-dom nature.

One thing I haven't quite figured out is the huge degree of variance among the normal appearing siblings. None of them express the checkerboard trait, but they are so variable. This could be due to a mixed lineage, or it could just mean that the checkerboard gene also effects the normal offspring in some way without carrying the gene over to be passed on.

I'm not a geneticist, but these are my observations.

On another note. The checkerboard king I have is incredibly heavy for her age. From the little I know about desert kings they are generally slightly more slender than holbrooki. This girl is freaking enormous to be so short, which would be more typical of holbrooki or floridana. BUT the small size rules out FL altogether. She is small for an '03, but her weight and girth would lead me to believe she is a holbrooki of some sort. The other checks I have seen were the same way. rather short and thick.......nigra??? Possibly? I don't know? If they are intergrades(which I DO believe albino holbrooki are) they are still of a co-dom nature. Just some thoughts.

Oh, and I really have no interest for the checkerboard girl in my collection. To be honest all I want to work with are true locale types collected by myself or close friends, with the exception of a white-sided colony one day.

I had discussed this with Manny a while back. He was all ears and we initially thought that perhaps it was this.....Now you know how the Amel Specks have a pattern....like Splendida influence for the sake of keeping this simple. Well I suggested the Checkers may have been trying to express that Amel type pattern, only it was on a normal colored Speck. However the fact Amel Checkers existed made it more confusing and thus proving the pattern was most likely unique, as it's own variant in both normal colored and Amel forms. The line of Sonoran Gophers I work with has a co dom Hypo, and there's the recent UltrAmel Corn which is also co dom. This would be another, and I hope it is, seeing those Boide guys seem to always have a lot less of a wait than us colubrid guys when proving out new morphs!
Tom Stevens

Has anyone ever seen a completely speckled amel Holbrooki?
I think a little selective line breeding could certainly produce some...
John Lassiter

Exactly Tom and John......I have never seen an amel holbrooki that looked like a holbrooki to me...lol. They all look like they have heavy influence from another ssp. Does anyone have the history on the first amel holbrooki? I think I have heard it was a LA animal. Correct?

I dont know the history of the amel Holbrooki to be honest with you, but I don't think it has Splendida influence unless the founding stock was collected where Splendida intergrade with Holbrooki. IE: here in South Texas and South Central Texas.
Some amel snakes just look different than the "wild type" ones...

on another note has anyone ever thought that Splendida was just a HUGE intergrade zone between Californiae and Holbrooki????.....LOL

John Lassiter

>>Keith, I think you said you wanted to see fresh pics of the little one, well here they are.
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>>The pattern hasn't changed, except.....if you look hard in a couple of the pics along the first 1/3 of the body each black scale is gaining the yellow spot. I'm going to go ahead and ASSUME this snake is going to be a very high percent yellow when mature. I guess we shall see.
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