Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was curious as to what causes the Tangerine (Orange vs. Yellow) coloring in Hondurans. Can a tri-color X tri-color breeding yeild Tangerine hatchlings? From what I've been able to gather its less of a recessive genetic trait (like amel or anery) and more of just a color variation. Any input would be very helpful.

Thank you,
Eric Z.

"I was curious as to what causes the Tangerine (Orange vs. Yellow) coloring in Hondurans. Can a tri-color X tri-color breeding yeild Tangerine hatchlings? From what I've been able to gather its less of a recessive genetic trait (like amel or anery)"

What actually "causes" the different colors of red, yellow and tangerine-orange are pigment cells known as "xanthophores". The term itself is derived from the Greek word "xanthos", meaning yellow. These cells that posess a predominantly red coloration are known as "erythrophores". When you add the prefix "A" or "AN" in front of the root words erythristic, or xanthic, they accurately describe the complete lack of these color pigments...i.e. anerythristic (pertaining to complete absence of red), and axanthic (pertaining to the complete absence of yellow-or yellow/orange), etc..

Those colors are not recessive. The tricolor and tangerine phases are both very normal natural variations seen in the wild, and they are very normal and typical. When bred together, and especially in captivity where all different types of color phases are in their genetic background, you can commonly produce tricolors, intermediate "peach" phase, ot tangerine and/or red bicolored animals, or any variation of all these within a given clutch. It really all depends on what the genetic parental background was. If you have two tricolor parents that don't have any tangerine or red lineage in their immediate background, your chances of producing tangerines or red phenotypes will greatly decrease. However, if the two parents both come from multi-phenotypic lineages, then you will likely get great variation within the offspring. Some tricolors, intermediates, and/or tangerine/red, etc...

Recessive traits in Hondurans are amelanism, anerythrism, and hypomelanism. They can be bred in any combinations of these three to produce single mutations, or multiple morphs. These types either are showing the trait(s) and would be homozygous, or they aren't showing them and would be normals or hets (heterozygous).

hope that helps.....

~Doug
-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Where I stated that "Those colors are not recessive" at the beginning of the second paragraph, it simply meant that the colors themselves (tricolor and tangerine) are not recessive. However the complete lack of, or reduction of any of those colors certainly are recessive just as I mentioned later...

cheers, ~Doug
-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Thanks Doug, your response helped greatly. Simply inquiring for future project/s; I have owned snakes over the years but have never been involved in breeding. As of now I have the Hypo tri-color male, and would one day like to breed. Im in the process of "doing my homework" for breeding. Leaning towards acquiring an albino tangerine female (or possibly hybino) in hopes of creating a first generation of tri color and tangerines with hets, which would utlimately lead to a very nice 2nd generation of offspring. Really am glad I stumbled upon this site. Everyone has been very helpful and informative. Thanks again.

Geez Doug, I didn't know you were a genetics professor

LOL!!..I guess I picked up a few small tid-bits of info along the way..

Problem is, the more I find out, I realise the LESS I actually know. That was an extremely basic "101" version, and I know enough to know I actually know very little if you know what I mean..LOL!!

cheers, ~Doug
-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com