Reptile & Amphibian Forums

http://market.kingsnake.com/detail.php?cat=59&de=377165
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

www.crimsonking.funtigo.com

Mark:

Neat-looking animals, but I have two questions. One, are those pure thayeri, or is there something else mixed in (not that I have any reason to suspect otherwise)? And two, is the striping a heritable condition or simply the byproduct of unusual incubation temps? If I were seriously interested in purchasing some of these, I'd want to know more about their background. Especially given the asking prices!

Cheers,

Bob

...were my questions as well.
Maybe someone could enlighten us?? (That's what I was hoping for)
The seller lists them as L.m. thayeri.
I can't decide if I'm seeing ruthveni or nelsoni in there or if it's simply that I want/expect it to be there.
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

www.crimsonking.funtigo.com

Until it's documented and the seller proves otherwise............
Those are hybrid or intergrades!
Another factor is if those were naturally occuring stripe or abberencies to that extreme in pure breed thayeri, those snakes would be worth much more to collectors and breeders and than what they are currently listed as.
False advertising runs rampant on the internet, I've seen it many times before. The ad says more about the integrity of the seller than anything else.
Uncloudy

It looks as if there is something to that doesn't it. I honestly don't know. When I saw the "patternless" headline I was actually thinking maybe they might be thayeri with the bands/blotches so reduced as to look "patternless". I have seen some screamers like that. Hoping to produce some myself someday.....
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

www.crimsonking.funtigo.com

Looks like MSP thayeri crossed with striped Ruthveni to me.....Lemke was working with some striped Ruthveni a while back. I have a double het for striped / amel ruthveni (Lemke line) now and its striped siblings (produced by Justin Mitcham) look all too similar to these "patternless thayeri".....
Just my opinion....I could be wrong.....again.

John Lassiter

Out of curiosity I sent an inquiry about these offspring and Mike Enyeart replied as follows...

Hi Maria,
Yes, pure L. m. thayeri. I started working with this bloodline in the
early 90's. The attached photos are of the original pair, and one of
the most "patternless" offspring. The original pair were litter mates
purchased by me from Jim and Sandy Veverka who produced them. Jim and
Sandy did not mix other subspecies, nor have I. Hope this helps.

>
> Hello, Your patternless thayeri are very interesting. Could you tell me
> if this is a pure L. m. thayeri line or if it is a hybrid/cross to
> another species or subspecies. A few of the offspring have traits that
> resemble other subspecies. For example, the head shape and trifolate
> head pattern of #1710 looks like that of L. m. mexicana. Thanks, Maria

Regards,
Mike Enyeart

He did send some photos of the original pair and an offspring, but I didn't want to post them without permission. Is anyone familiar with Jim and Sandy Veverka?

Maria

I see the mex mex similarities also Maria, my inquiry last year was almost identical to yours, as well as was the response. I have the photos of all the offspring from last year along with many of the breeder adults.

We've seen thayeri pattern traits do interesting things at times, but nothing quite as wild as this. There is always the first and I must admit, a few of these things are pretty amazing looking, just too difficult to believe there isn't more to them than just thayeri.

Mike

This is the exact problems with hybrids. When and if something truly amazing comes along, we won't know if its the real thing or not. Sad that it has to be this way. mike b.

I was going to “chime in” with the same thought. This is exactly why I think Hybrids are BAD. All the other arguments could be debated all day, but this one can not be disputed.

The existence of hybrids puts every legitimate Species or Ssp. specific mutation into question. If I had an albino Thayeri show up, I would question its legitimacy myself. Not because of anything I did, but it would make me wonder if an accidental hybrid was in the woodpile.

Look how most of us question the legitimacy of these thayeri?, they could be the real thing but no one can ever know for sure now. We see some resemblance to mex mex or ruthveni, but who knows how this mutation/characteristic, if legitimate, would affect head patterns, etc. - we don’t know! It is sad that ANY legitimate accomplishments (or lucky break) will be questioned . . . how could it not be?
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Rick
Never Enough
Reptiles

I wouldn't call them patternless.

I think they are pure Thayeri, I have talked to a couple of people that are working on some aberrant Thayeri projects, but they seem to want to stay “behind the scenes”. The striped Ruthveni haven’t been around long enough to be part of any mix with these and what would the point be. Pure striped Ruthveni are worth much more than these are selling for.

I don’t think “patternless” is a very good description, they are certainly not patternless. Striped, or splotched or make something up, but not patternless.
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Rick
Never Enough
Reptiles

I think Striped Ruthveni HAVE been around long enough to be in the mix......Lloyd Lemke was working with them before he passed.
If you have seen what Justin Mitcham has done with them you would be amazed. They are AMAZINGLY similar in appearance. Some of the Ruthveni Justin has now that are aberrant look nearly identical in pattern......
But.......If it occurs in Ruthveni than why not thayeri???????
John Lassiter

Amazon did sell a dozen patternless last year.
If any pure breed thayeri were het for stripe, patternless, or abberencies it would be worth $500-$1000 just like a ruthveni.
Thayeri genes are used to create a myriad of beautiful hybrid and intergrade snakes. It would be easy for a MSP or Neuvo Leon phase thayeri that was used in a breeding project over the last 10 years to show no visual signs, but still be het like with a ruthveni and thayeri mexicana intergrade.
Pure thayeri with this genetic disposition would be worth much more and desired by every hobbiest, collector, breeder, and vender whose into mexicana (thayeri).
Since new thayeri speciems haven't been imported from Mexico in a long time, it's still up to the seller to prove otherwise and in my opinion his explaination wasn't good enough.
Happy Herping,
Uncloudy

I'm into mexicana and I think those things are just plain unattractive. The selling price to me seems high! Then again this is the guy who culled 2 piebald carpet pythons because I thought there was something wrong with them!

>>I think Striped Ruthveni HAVE been around long enough to be in the mix......Lloyd Lemke was working with them before he passed.
>>If you have seen what Justin Mitcham has done with them you would be amazed. They are AMAZINGLY similar in appearance. Some of the Ruthveni Justin has now that are aberrant look nearly identical in pattern......
>>But.......If it occurs in Ruthveni than why not thayeri???????
>>John Lassiter

I have only heard about the striped Ruthveni being around about three to 4 years but it sounds like they were around longer. I agree the patterns look very similar to the pictures of Justin's I have seen, in fact just like them. However, I still go back to my other question, why cross them? I know people do stupid stuff all the time though.

How much of this stock did Lloyd Lemke let out? It would have taken two to three generations after a cross to make them look more Thayeri than anything else. So, the cross would have happened at least five to seven years ago and more likely 6 to 9. A cross is not out of the question but it just doesn't make since to me. If I had Ruthveni like that, I would be crossing them with albino (amel) Ruthveni not messing things up crossing them with Thayeri. Like you said, if it occurred in Ruthveni why couldn’t it occur in Thayeri? I don’t know the person selling them, but I would hope they are doing their best to be honest about them. I am pretty naive though.
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Rick
Never Enough
Reptiles

if they were crossed to a ruthven don't you think they would be completly patternless or striped? since it is a genetic trait. they definitley look like they are crossed to ruthven and look similar to heterozygous for stripe ruthvens. but then they should hatch some stripes right?

Eventually some stripes would be produced if it were, in fact Ruthveni influence.......Justin has some amazing striped Ruthveni.....almost perfectly striped (I think he calls them super stripes)....They would be even more awesome if amelanistic....
John Lassiter

...we all know where the albino gene originated.

http://market.kingsnake.com/image/444086.jpg
http://market.kingsnake.com/detail.php?cat=29&de=377815

I looked into the patternless project last year also and I feel the seller of the patternless animals may just be another unsuspecting victim of the Mix Mex craze I've heard about.

Hybrid/cross fallout?

Mike

OOOOOOOOH!.......patternless........LOL
I believe I will stick to the Ruthveni influence in the 'patternless' thayeri......And you may be right Mike,
They may not even know themselves......
John Lassiter

how hard would it be to get DNA testing done to verify they are pure? Is it very costly. This people should really look into it because its things like this that can taint bloodlines or give hybrids a bad name.

"its things like this that can taint bloodlines or give hybrids a bad name"

You pretty much hit the nail square on the head.

As far as DNA testing goes, hiring it done would most likely be out of the question costly. Even if it were possible, would everyone believe it?

Amelanistic thayeri are fairly common in the hobby these days and none were ever collected, or produced in captivity that we are aware of. Now what do we do?!!

Mike

An true, pure amel thayeri was produced years back, but was never proved out.....Aaron Mattson knows more about the snake than I. I believe it was produced here in Texas......Too bad....I would have got rid of nearly everything to keep that one and its sibs thriving for future breeding.......
John Lassiter

That correct, a true albino thayeri was featured in Captive Breeding magazine. I have the issue stored somewhere, someday I will go thru my boxes and find out what year it was produced.
Joe Forks actually posted a picture of it on this forum a few months ago. He also said the snake was produced by a guy from TX and that he did not know which of his breeders had produced it, the snake died without reproducing and no others were produced.
You might be able to find the post with a search.

...and if I remember correctly it was a breeder in Austin. Sad story indeed and I always thought it to be a bit surprising there was so much mystery involved. Likewise, I would have devoted nearly all my effort to determining parentage and attempting to reproduce the morph. As valuable as it would be to the hobby, and would have been then as well (not just in monetary terms), I would think that it would immediately become any devoted thayeri breeders primary project of intense focus. Not knowing any more than I do, I can't help but wonder how legitimate that animal actually was. I would love to hear more details one day and read what the article had to say.

Intended point remains, no albino thayeri have ever been produced and validated in captivity that we are aware of and we now have more and more appearing on the market each year that are labeled as such. And I'm convinced that many of those selling them aren't knowledgeable enough about the animals to understand what they are offering for sale, they just don't know any better. A lot of honest people end up pretty disappointed down the road.

Mike

DNA testing IS very costly........I wanted to test some of the ratsnakes in my area of South Texas to see if there was Slowenskii influence and my pocket book decided not to.....LOL

I see future herpers carrying an inexpensive DNA test kit though.........HAHAHAHAAHHA
John Lassiter

John,

What type of "DNA testing" were you looking into? There are different types of comparisons that can be done depending on the objective and the information at hand. I think the DNA tests that most people think of is to prove or disprove parental lineage (in humans), and this type is called "DNA fingerprinting". With this type of test, specific enzymes are used to cut DNA strands at specific base sequences and the size of each DNA fragment is compared to another (mother, father and offspring). Another type of DNA test is for sequence comparisons, and yes, this can be very costly depending of the length of sequence. There are publications out there that have compared entire mitochondrial DNA sequences in squamates (lizards and reptiles), but these studies have a different purpose in mind. Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the mother, so sequence comparisons only give an indication of maternal lineage. At present, there is no reptilian genome (complete set of genes in an organism) that has been mapped. To accomplish this, it is VERY expensive. Remember, it took decades to map the human genome and countless dollars.

As far as I can tell, the problem is that you need to know the genetic variability (DNA sequence which encodes for particular traits) within a species or subspecies (thayeri) and also know what trait (and DNA sequence) characterizes a different species or subspecies (mex mex or ruthveni). The DNA sequencing that IS done routinely and that is not very expensive is to compare the sequence of a particular known gene (that is, you already know what protein the DNA sequence codes for) to another. Usually the individual sample DNA is first amplified using a procedure called PCR (polymerase chain reaction) which requires a primer (which means you have to already know the genetic sequence). Apparently, there is a generic reptilian primer that has been used for this purpose. Once you have the amplified DNA (encoding a single gene), sequencing it only costs about $12.00 per sample.

Give me an e-mail if you think I can help in any way. I am a research scientist that specializes in using molecular tools to better understand heart failure in humans (you can google my name and get a web page summarizing my research). In my lab we routinely use PCR to amplify DNA sequences. I don't have any experience, however, in using this technique to help classify or declassify species. If you have any ideas about this, I would do my best to help.

Maria Heidkamp

n/p

Haha...I agree, John.

I've had the same problems looking at Great Plains ratsnakes. Not only is it unclear if the albinos and hypos, that began popping up about the same time, are pure, but also folks don't always distinguish between emoryi and meahllmorum subspecies. So those have been crossed a lot w/o any documentation.

I decided just to go with crosses, as I at least know exactly what I have, and I'm crossing albino and hypo corns with emoryi and meahllmorum and calling them what they are, creamsicle and cinnamon. Basically, they are just pretty little mutts, and they are prettier than the "so called" pure morphs.

I also have locality meahllmorum, but there aren't any locality mutations to go with them. I'm keeping my localities just the normal color/pattern. Someday, maybe those meahllmorum/slowinskii near you will get tested by the university people. I'm still waiting for a new paper from Vaughan, et al.

TC

...and I'm glad it did. Great to see you back here by the way.

I think we may have talked about these last year at one point and I couldn't agree with you more about the ruthie influence. Also, being another mex mex fan, I'm curious if you see the few traits so common in mex mex that I also see in these patternless thayeri? Specifically... those circular markings that connect what would normally be saddles and can also be open saddle centers, the shape of the nuchal pattern bottom edge on some of them that is typical of mex mex, and the bold outlined head patterns on some that look so familiar?

Aside from that, those Lemke striped ruthveni you are building a collection of from Justin... now there's an extremely worthwhile and rewarding project to be involved in. Those babies are the real deal and are they ever fantastic! Show us some of your photos of those again when you have time and include the albinos if able?!!

Mike

Very nice looking snake. But, with so many crosses on the market, I will have to stay with purchases from people I know or who are well known and trusted for breeding pure lines.

Wouldn't mind having one for show though.
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