Ultra Mystery...

Hi guys... looks like we have an ultra-mystery on our hands...

I've been talking with several people who are breeding Ultras, and there've been some weird stuff hatching out. In some clutches, it almost looks as if Ultra is a dominant or co-dominant gene (odd mutants pop out, where the bloodline is unlikely to have had ultra genetics in its history). In other clutches, the results aren't unexpected, or perhaps refute this claim...

If you've been breeding ultras, post your experienes (and photos!) here.

The more data we have, the better chance we have of sorting this whole mess out...!

-Kat

Last year, I bred my ultrahypo motley dh butter to an Amber het amel. I only held back one of the hatchlings (as it was the only survivor). What I thought at the time was an ordinary caramel het for ultra, hypo, and motley... is now something I'm no longer sure of.

This is the snake at hatching. I've posted this pic before on the forums, and everyone agreed (at the time) it was a caramel based on the pic provided.



This is the same snake as a yearling, accompanied by her standard HypoA-based Amber mother. Can you tell which one is the Amber? The Amber mom is the paler, less bright, larger female.

(edited to a link as pic was too large)
http://home.earthlink.net/~evilkat/ambercaramel.jpg

Here's a better solo pic of the caramel het ultra:



This one is from back in November, but has better lighting:





This year, I bred my ultra motley het butter to three females. Joe's sunkissed, Joe's lava, and my own lavender (het amel). The first two clutches were 100% normals, and there wasn't enough variation in any of the hatchlings for me to examine things closer.

The third clutch produced normals (some resembling having caramel heritage), definite amels, and then two weird hatchlings which resemble some sort of hypo (presumed ultra).

Here's the first:



And here's the second, with amel sibling for contrast:



The mom is from SMR, and I'm told by Don that she lines she came from never produced any hypos of any sort, ultra or otherwise.

Aaaand that's about it from my experience. I'll see if I can get the others to join in the discussion (it's hatching season so they may be busy).

-Kat

Co-dominant Ultras? Wouldn't that be something!

Based upon some private emails that have been flying around, the Ultra Hypo seems to be co-dominant or semi-dominant with other recessive genes. It may be co-dominant to the Amel gene and or the Carmel gene. We could even though in the Standard Hypo gene, which would answer a few of the mysteries from the breedings between the two. It might even be co-dominant to the Normal gene, but produces a Brown and Yellow Corn instead of a Hypo. Have you noticed how some Ultras look very different than others? Some are perhaps Het Ultra, which would be a visual co-dominant to Normal but be Brown and Yellow. A Super Ultra, or Homo Ultra would look like a Hypo Corn to us. We have been assuming that it is a double homo recessive hypo gene, but it may not be.

The Hypo gene in Boas is semi-dominant to the normal gene and when your breed a Hypo Boa to a Normal Boa you either get a Hypo Boa or what we call a Hypo Sibling, which does not carry the hypo gene at all and can never produce a Hypo. There are other Semi-Dominant Genes in Boas as well. A few are the Jungle Boas, Arabesque Boas and Motley Boas. This is going to be a bit confusing to us corn snake enthusiasts at first since we have gotten use to recessive genes. I am just starting to figure it out myself. A Het Hypo Boa is a visual Hypo Boa. A Homo Hypo Boa is a Super Hypo Boa. When you breed a Super Hypo Boa to a Normal you get all Het Hypo Boas which are visual hypos. Confused yet, just wait until you start hearing about some of the breeding results people have been getting between the Ultra and Amels or Het Amels.

Hopefully, some of the breeders that have been getting Hypos and odd looking Amels in F1 breedings between Ultra X Amel, will post their results and thoughts on the matter when they get time. The Amels or hets for amels in these cases are very unlikely to be carrying the Ultra Hypo Gene in a recessive way. Perhaps breeders that have bred the Ultra to the Standard Hypo and produced Hypos, may reevaluate the results as well. This would explain many of the confusing results people have been getting with the Ultras.

I bred a Snow Motley to a Sunkissed Hypo and produced 5 Hypos out of 6 hatchlings. The Snow Motley is extremely unlikely to be het for Sunkissed Hypo. Is this another case, where the Sunkissed is co-dominant to one of the three recessive genes the Snow Motley is Homo for? This seems more likely than my Snow Motley to be carrying the Sunkissed Gene. The Snow Motley was produced in my colony from Motleys that I have had for at least 15 years. The Sunkissed Hypos were not even discovered yet. Has anybody else bred the Sunkissed Hypo to an Amel or Snow perhaps, or has this just not been done yet?

Below is an Email that I received from Mike Shivers a few months back, when we started the Hypo Test breeding Project. Mike Falcon started or discovered the Ultra Hypos, but most of the Ultras that are around now came from Shivers. When I read his email back then, much of it did not make any since. Many of you that have been involved in our private emails pick this email apart, for evidence of the possible co-dominance of the Ultra Hypo instead of it being a recessive gene.

Shivers bred an Ultra to an Amel and produced Hypos in F1. He also bred the Ultras to the Standard Hypo and produced Hypos in F1. (I always assumed that the Standard Hypo gene was mixed into the Ultras and the Amel he bred to the Ultra was carrying the Hypo gene as well. Shivers also states that the Ultra Hypo seems to be compatible with the Caramel Gene. When I read that, I thought he was going wacko or miss stated what he was trying to say, but perhaps not.

Here is one of Shivers emails in its entirety:
“Sorry but my collection has been sold. I think that people are getting a little overboard on the whole hypo thing. I have bred the ultra hypo to hypos and have always gotten hypos from them. The original breeding was a male snake I got from Andy Barr. This snake was from the ultra hypo background but was more brown and yellow color. I bought an adult female from Rich that was an amel het for butter. This was before Rich had marketed butter. I bred the male from Andy to the female from Rich. The snakes that were reproduced seemed to resemble the ultra hypos. I kept back the nicest ones and raised them. They turned out to be very nice hypos kind of different looking. I bred the male that i held back to the snake i got from Rich (his mother) and reproduced the first 2 ambers. I bred that same male to his sister and they reproduced some awesome hypos along with some hypo motleys.
The snake that i gotten from Andy must have been motley or het. I think there were 2 males and 1 female that were ultra hypo motleys. I raised these and when they were bred back to one another they reproduced some amber motleys and butter motleys. The caramel gene seemed to be compatible to this ultra hypo gene the only difference was that it did the some thing to the caramel gene that it did to the hypo gene. Just as the ultra hypo gene seems to make the snakes much more orange and absolutely no black. It makes the amber and butter much more yellow with almost no browns. I sold my collection (all of this high yellow line) to Ken siffert a friend of Mike Pinichi. There is one of the amber motley males that so awesome that i am sure there in not another like him out there. The color was so light yellow it was just incredible. I also bred the original amber male to butters and other caramels from other lines and they always reproduced butter, caramels and ambers.”
Mike

Hehe... looks like oddball hatchling #1 has shed. His eyecolor stands out much better now.




-Kat

Well, while I am still trying to decipher Shiver's email and Joe's post, I would like to run with the idea that the ultra is in fact co-dominant. I was just thinking, right at the end of Mike's email, he said he bred a male amber to butters and other ambers and produced all butters, ambers and caramels. That orginal amber male must have been a visual hypo male, a non-super hypo, a het ultra male. This would give it an amber appearance but wouldn't reproduce ultras. :shrugs: Correct?

Just a little idea I thought I should state, because I have a feeling we are going to spend a long time picking these breeding trails apart.

GoldDust x Amber

Just for the record, I refer to the Ultra Caramel line from Mike Shiver internally in my records as a "GoldDust". I am not suggesting that anyone use this term, but the name has stuck in my mind, and it just makes it easier on my to use a term that I don't have to think twice about what it is.

This breeding produced pretty much what I had expected (or at least hoped for). All Caramel corns, indicating that the Ultra gene is not the same as the type 'A' Hypomelanism in that particular Amber female.

Out of 12 babies hatched, all 12 appear to be Caramels.

The range of variation in the individual babies is well within normal for what I have seen in typical Caramels.

GoldDust x Caramel Motley

The results of this breeding did not go as expected.

The female bred with the GoldDust is a Caramel Motley that came from a breeding of a male normal corn het for Butter Motley to a Butter Motley. This was the original project line that produced my Butter Motleys, and there has NEVER been any instance of Hypomelanism showing up in any of the animals in this group. We are talking about a substantial number of animals.

Nine eggs hatched with the following results:

5 - Caramels
1 - Butter
2 - Ambers
1 - GoldDust (?)



This is the one that appears to be a GoldDust(?) baby:


Some comparisons between a regular Amber and the GoldDust(?):



A comparison between a Caramel and the GoldDust(?):

GoldDust x Bloodred

Now this one was completely unexpected. The Bloodred came from Don Soderberg and he has told me that he is more than 90 percent certain that there is NO hypomelanism in that line of Bloodreds I got from him.

Results of 14 eggs hatched:

5 - normals
4 - amelanistics
5 - hypomelanistics






I have a few more clutches that were bred by the GoldDust male. One was a breeding with a Hypomelanistic Lavender female, that appears to have produced all normal offspring. Photos will be posted when they shed.

Another clutch I am anticipating seeing is a breeding of the GoldDust to my original Ultra Hypo female that I got directly from Mike Falcon. This was one of the latest clutches laid, so that will be a little while coming before I can analyze the results.

Hmmm, maybe some link between the 'hypo' that tags along with Motley and Ultra?

We see things like Motley and Milksnake phase showing what appears to me to be somewhat of a co-dominant effect. Maybe Ultra and the 'hypo' effect from the Motley are closely related.

The Bloodred issue is interesting. You'd think that would have turned up in Don's line.

The pic on the bottom of the Blood post, is that just heavily influenced by Blood or does it have a patternless ventral? Sure looks like a Blood to me from the head pattern.

I'm still trying to make sense out of the various breedings. There are so many mutants involved that it is difficult.

Kat says she got all normal babies from breeding an ultra motley het butter to Joe's sunkissed and Joe's lava. This is consistent with ultrahypo being recessive to its normal allele.

Mike Shivers says that he has bred ultrahypos to hypos and gotten hypos. A possible way to do this is to have the ultrahypos also homozygous for hypo. Here is the idea: ultrahypo is a recessive mutant gene at a location on a chromosome, and hypo is a recessive mutant gene located at a different location on a totally different chromosome. Mating an ultrahypo, hypo corn snake to a hypo corn snake would produce hypos that are also heterozygous for ultrahypo.

Ultrahypo may or may not be a new allele of a known mutant gene. If so, that is interesting, but multiple alleles are already known in snakes. Think of motley and striped.

By definition, dominant, recessive, and codominant refer ONLY to relations among alleles. There is NO WAY that ultrahypo can be codominant to both amelanistic and caramel mutant genes. Because amelanistic and caramel have been proven to not be alleles. The effects of two independent mutants may combine to produce a new phenotype, like the effects of amelanistic and anerythristic combine to produce snow. IMHO, that is what is happening with ultrahypo and other mutants.

IMHO, the first thing to do is to breed an ultrahypo to a normal corn snake. That would separate ultrahypo from other mutants. Then breed the F1 snakes together. The results of that test would give us a good idea as to whether ultrahypo is dominant, codominant, or recessive to its normal allele. If ultrahypo is a recessive mutant gene, then an ultrahypo could be mated to a caramel to test whether ultrahypo is an allele of caramel. If ultrahypo is dominant or codominant to its normal allele, then tests for allelism are more complicated.

And lastly, the people on the boa forum at kingsnake dot com have developed a ghetto genetics dialect of their own. We absolutely DO NOT want to adopt their definitions of standard terms like "dominant", "codominant", and "heterozygous".

Ultra Photos

It would be nice to see some Ultra photos so we know what look we are talking about. I was a bit confused between the difference in Kat’s Ultra Motley “Deathy” and the photos that I received from Mike Falcon and some that I have seen Steve Roylance post.

I realize that Kat’s is a Motley, but the difference is too dramatic to be just the Motley influence. Perhaps hers is a what? Ultra Amel? One co-dominant Ultra and Amel gene? Perhaps it is the same thing that her dark eyed Amels are, but Motley too.

Here are some photos that Mike Falcon sent me. Since he discovered the Ultras, I would assume that these first two photos are of what he considers Ultra Hypos. He did mention that this particular Ultra was “High Yellow”. The last photo is of an “Amber”. I assume that it is a “Golddust”, since he was talking about working the Ultras into the Amber line.

Sorry

paulh said:

And lastly, the people on the boa forum at kingsnake dot com have developed a ghetto genetics dialect of their own. We absolutely DO NOT want to adopt their definitions of standard terms like "dominant", "codominant", and "heterozygous".

Click to expand...

Based upon the breeding results so far, it seems as if Ultra may or may not be an allele with Amel. Most of the odd results have came from clutches that contained Amels, which means that the corn the Ultra was bred to was either Amel or Het amel.

Of course the Ultras used could also be het for Amel as well. Remember that the original breeding that Shivers did was an Ultra X Amel het Butter. This would produce hets for Ultra, Amel and Caramel in F1 and some of them were visual hypos. When these Hets were bred together, all of the hatchlings would be possible hets or homo for the other genes. To complicate things further, some of these F2’s were bred to Ambers, which introduced the Hypo gene into the mix as well.

Any and all Corns from Shivers Ultra line, are homo or possible hets for Ultra, amel, hypo, and caramel. Lets not forget that the Motley gene is in the mix as well. I have never been able to contact Andy Barr. He is a missing link between Falcon and Shivers and he could have bred who knows what into the line as well.

The odd results, especially the dark eyed amels, are leading us to believe that the Ultras are a co-dominant gene to something. The results can also be explained by the numerous combinations of the many mutant genes that are possibly in each mix. There are five known mutant genes that could be in each Ultra that is used for breeding.

It certainly bears investigating, Joe... Deathy is indeed different from the images you've shown, so I suspect one of two things:

1. Het ultra, het amel, with amel being an allele to ultra
-OR-
2. Het ultra, homozygous amel, with the single copy of the ultra gene able to exert its presence due to the lack of normal melanin production.

I'd have to do some test-breedings to find out either way. Next year, Deathy's going to meet a certain snow stripe female, methinks...

We're not going to solve the puzzle this year, I suspect.

-Kat

I haven't read through the thread yet, but the impression I got based on the data presented in the emails was that this Ultra gene could be an allele to amelanism. I wasn't able to find a breeding outcome which defied that assertion.

Assuming it's an allele to Amel, the following genotypes are possible at the Amel locus:
AA = Normal
Aa = Normal (het amel)
Au = Normal (het UltraHypo)
aa = Amelanistic
uu = UltraHypo
au = non-normal, probably either ultra-looking or amel-looking, or something between. Like Deathy, in this case.

One consequence is that breeding an Ultra to an amel could produce ultras and amels, or just amels, or just ultras. Another is that breeding an "Ultra" to a het for amel would produce things that would never be expected by anyone assuming Ultra is an independent new locus.

Something that I believe should be checked out is the possibility that any or some of the many now existing "Ultrahypos het for butter" might actually be genotype "au" at the amel locus.

Rich Z said:

Now this one was completely unexpected. The Bloodred came from Don Soderberg and he has told me that he is more than 90 percent certain that there is NO hypomelanism in that line of Bloodreds I got from him.

Results of 14 eggs hatched:

5 - normals
4 - amelanistics
5 - hypomelanistics

Click to expand...

This also appears to fit the model:

IF the GoldDust male is heterozygous (au) and the blood is het amel (Aa) then the results would be (statistically, of course) 25% each of:
Aa (Normal)
au ("Hypo" like the dad)
Au (Normal)
aa (Amel)

It also makes sense of why so many diverse animals that are so unlikely to be carrying Ultra can still produce "ultra" offspring.

I have not hatched any out yet myself but I can offer some photos of the snakes from

Mike Shiver. I was lucky enough to get a double clutch from the Ultra caramel female and a nice double clutch from the Ultra caramel Motley female as well. I recently traded some emails with Mike shiver concerning the history of these snakes. The male Ultra caramel Motleys and the Butter motley came from the same clutch and were a result of breeding Ultra to Ultra. The female Ultra caramel Motley was also a result of breeding an Ultra to an ultra. Here are some photos I recently took. Thanks

the butter motley sister

she is also from an Ultra to an Ultra breeding and is a sibling to the males.

here is an alleged Ultra caramel female and a sister who is het for Ultra

Mike tells me this about these snakes. He bred an Ultra Caramel to an unrelated caramel and hatched out Ultra ambers and very yellow caramels that are I guess het for the Ultra. I think there were only two Ultra caramels in the clutch and one of them is the Ultra caramel in the above comparison photo. All of the caramel hets were very yellow for caramels. I had bought a trio of the hets when they first hatched out(not really knowing what they were). I sold a pair to Ken siffert and the caramel female in the above comparison shot, I traded to Vin Russo. I just got her back as Vin was selling off some of his stuff. Now Mike tells me that the female was unrelated to the Ultra line so it shouldnt have produced any Ultras!!!? I'll leave that for you guys to hammer out. I figured the photos may help. Thanks

a female Ultra caramel Motley

Mike tells me she was also from an Ultra to an Ultra breeding. She just doubled up for me with a decent clutch so I hoping that when and if the eggs hatch it may tell us more. BTW, when I say Ultra to Ultra breedings, I mean a definate Ultra het for X,Y,Z bred to a definate Ultra het for X,Y,Z. I just cant remember what the combos were but what was relevant to me was that they were from an Ultra to Ultra. Thanks

this is just a solo photo of the Ultra caramel that was in the comparison shot

with her sister, the caramel het for Ultra. I hope all of this helps somehow. Thanks for looking. The photos are hard to capture the beauty of these motleys. They really are special looking. Have a good night.