Before everyone jumps on me for butting in here, let me say that Tracy and I were talking about the matter of the “harlequin boas,” and then she went and asked me to chime in on the discussion on the forum. I think there are some important issues involved here that go beyond “harlequin boas” and if anything, my own point of view regarding harlequin boas is relatively objective because I’m essentially unfamiliar with them. I did read the recent thread on this forum [some of you need to lay off the strong coffee] and I went to Brendan and Carol’s site and read what they had posted there. I’d like to add that the BCI by Design site is a very nice clean website—very well done!
So be clear that Tracy and I don’t have any harlequin boas, nor do we have anything against them. We do have some concerns about the protocols involved in assigning names to lineages and appearances, and so I let Tracy twist my arm--it was either go outside and clear brush with a chainsaw or write this, and it’s cold outside.
I think that once the egos, opinions and mischief is sifted from the controversy swirling around the harlequin boas, what remains is a primarily a problem with semantics compounded by what I see as the Magees inadvertently ignoring some generally accepted protocols regarding the naming of lineages and appearances. It’s easy to overlook what I am referring to as “protocols” because they are unwritten in the herp world in any formal sense. However, they are necessary, largely based in common sense (and commercial savvy) and in much of the animal world they are pretty tightly defined.
A lineage is not the same thing as an appearance. A lineage is a line of descent from some designated founders. A lineage is the set of animals that can trace their ancestry back to one pair of animals or one particular animal. One can have a lineage founded by completely normal snakes.
Lineages are very important in dog pedigrees, registered cattle, and just about all other animals that are shown in competitions. Most lineage names incorporate the name of the founding animal itself with the name of the owner (usually a person or business.) Sometimes a descriptive word or two is used, as well. In most cases in the animal world, a lineage is created to preserve some attribute (which can be appearance) that is polygenetic in basis. There is no single gene that makes a Hereford cow different from an Angus, or a poodle different from a boxer.
I think that “harlequin boas” clearly can be identified as a lineage. No problems there. Just as a matter of protocol, however, it should be clarified that the founding animals of a lineage are identified as the “P” generation (meaning “parental generation.) I think the Magees have misidentified their founders as the F1 generation. Yes, that pair is captive-bred, but they were not identified as anything unique and all of the rest of the clutch was dispersed, so I’d say the project begins with the original pair that I believe are in the collection of the Magees (but not illustrated on their website that I could find.) That creates the appearance that this project has been bred through more generations than is fact. The P generation begets the F1 generation; the F1s beget the F2s. I think there are two (small?) F2 litters that have been born and I’m not sure what were the results, I've seen the pictures of one from each litter. Anyway, that’s not that important to my own rambling…
To be honest, I don’t know what is the accepted terminology applied to the animals resulting from crosses made between animals from different generations. For example, what generation is created when an F1 is bred to a P animal? I’m not sure but I think the resulting animals are still considered to be F1s, not F2s. In any case, this is why pedigrees are associated with lineages; a pedigree clearly illustrates the relationships of animals in lineages. Anyway, I digress…
I do think the next big thing in the herp world will be competitive shows, similar to dog shows and koi shows. I think its years off before it happens, but that’s where I think we’re headed and I’m looking forward to it with much anticipation. When it happens, lineages and pedigrees will become very important in the herp world. Sorry, another digression…
An “appearance” is the “look” of an animal, the visual impression created by the combination of its color and pattern. In one sense, every animal has an appearance; snake breeders usually refer to appearances in a different sense. A “morph” is a variant and the term “morph” is usually but not always synonymous with “appearance” in that both color and pattern are considered as morphological traits by taxonomists. I suppose that one could have a “big-eyed” morph or a “giant morph” that had a “normal appearance” or an “albino appearance.” An appearance is a morph but not all morphs are appearances.
An “appearance” is a descriptive label that refers to a defined suite of characters of pattern and color that combined creates a particular look. In the common usage of the term there is the implication that the suite of characters that create an appearance are inherited in a predictable “pattern of inheritance.” An appearance name can be synonymous with a lineage that is associated with the appearance, and it can be a commercial name. There are probably other differences in the intent of the word as it is variously used; our failure to distinguish the subtleties of the uses sometimes gets things mucked up.
Are all snakes with the same “appearance” little carbon copies of each other? No, not at all--Tracy and I have hatched several sets of identical twin jungle carpet pythons, and even the genetically identical twins vary from each other in the fine points of color and pattern.
There is a range of variation within an appearance that is expected. The range of variation is often not easily defined—for example, when is a hypomelanistic boa just a pale normal boa? [most of the time, I think…] Sometimes the range of variation is not known or has never been quantified. There has to be parameters, boundaries for the range of variation, outside of which the appearance changes.
One of the problems with assigning names to the appearances of boas is that boa constrictors have a huge range of variation of what can be considered to be a “normal appearance” that is not seen in other snake species with much smaller geographic ranges and less polymorphic appearances.
Describing a new “appearance” (in the snake-breeder sense of the word) should be sort of like describing a new species. One should describe the appearance with text or illustration, designate certain animals as being representative of this appearance, define the acceptable variation of the appearance, define how to distinguish this new appearance from other similar appearances, describe the pattern of inheritance of the appearance, and give the appearance an informative or descriptive name.
There are various accepted descriptive names assigned to particular appearances, including albino, hypomelanistic, axanthic, striped, leucistic, patternless, and anerythristic, to name a few. Every one of these terms is a real word with applications beyond the snake world. When one hears a snake described as “hypomelanistic,” there forms a mental image of some of the attributes of the appearance of the snake in advance of actually seeing the snake. Therefore the meaning of “hypomelanistic” has to be considered if one intends to describe a snake as such.
It used to be that mailed price lists were the main source of distributed information and the first person who brought an appearance of snake to the market, offered it for sale, usually coined the to name of the appearance of the snake that ended up being accepted. Now it seems like the first person to publicize a snake on the Internet does so by naming it and then expects that name to be accepted. There’s nothing wrong with this, but this can’t happen in a vacuum. One can’t identify a black snake as a hypomelanistic snake on a whim if one expects a name to be accepted.
Ah, there’s the rub—acceptance! Why do some names get etched into stone? It is the acceptance and use of the name that begins to give the name an actual meaning. Often names aren’t accepted by the snake community. It is a real challenge to coin a name for a new appearance of snake that will gain acceptance. Lots of names just don’t catch on.
So here are my own observations regarding the “harlequin boa.” I think there are problems with the project. First off, I can’t accept that the “harlequin boa” is an actual appearance in the sense of a related group of snakes all with a similar inheritable defined suite of characters of color and/or pattern that differ significantly from the normal appearance of the species. Based on the pictures I’ve seen, I don’t believe that the “harlequin” will pass the brown bag test.
This is the brown bag test—in a brown bag put 90 randomly picked wild-caught normal boas and 10 harlequin boas. The test is whether or not a non-herper could then separate the 10 “harlequin” boas from the other 90 with 100% certainty.
Ok, so there really isn’t any brown bag test, but it’s a good mental exercise to consider just how distinct is a “harlequin” (or any of several other nebulously named boa appearances, for that matter.) Based on the pictures I’ve seen of “harlequin boas”, I don’t think that there’s any way that they will pass the brown bag test, which is a simple way to say that I do not believe that most of the snakes in the lineage differ significantly from normal boas.
Yes, some of the boas in this lineage are striped or have other aberrant dorsal or tail patterns—so do a percentage of normal boas. The real problem is that I do not find a good argument at the Magee’s website that there is some unifying suite of characters that gives this lineage of boas some unique common appearance.
The claim is made that the snakes are hypomelanistic “clean” snakes and I’m not disagreeing, there are some pretty snakes pictured on the site. I refer back to the brown bag test—normal boas are highly polymorphic and I think it would serve the Magees to better illustrate the variation within their clutches. It’s just not made clear whether the appearance is inherited as a recessive trait or as a co-dominant/dominant and some of the information that might be enlightening is not available. It also seems to me that there exists a strong possibility that the apparent extreme variation in appearance might best be explained as a polygenetic trait.
Second, (and of considerably less importance) I personally find the use of the word “harlequin” to be a poor choice in describing this snake. It’s a cool word and one not otherwise assigned to a boa—so what’s my problem? The problem is that a harlequin is defined in the dictionary as a particular kind of a snake. “Harlequin” is a real word; among its several definitions is included “a small brightly colored snake patterned with brightly colored diamond-shaped scales.” [Once upon a time, the coral snake, M. fulvius, was called a “harlequin snake.”] “Harlequin” can also be used as an adjective to mean that something is fancifully decorated in a colorful diamond pattern.
To illustrate my objection, if one had a boa that was remindful of a rattlesnake in color and pattern, I suppose I could stay seated if it were named a “rattlesnake boa” or something in that vein. But I would have a hard time accepting a “rattlesnake boa” if it didn’t look like a rattlesnake, especially so if it just looked like a regular boa. These boas just don’t remind me of coral snakes.
If Brendan and Carol’s surname was “Albino” instead of Magee, I doubt that this lineage of boa could be called the “Albino lineage.” Of course, it is their right to call it whatever they want, but I don’t think that the commercial name for this lineage of snakes would ever gain public use and acceptance if it were called the “Albino lineage.” An “albino” is a real thing with its own particular attributes--so is a “harlequin.” “Harlequin” simply does not apply to this boa—it is not small, the scales are not diamond-shaped, and it’s not brightly colorful.
So I think that “harlequin” washes out as a valid appearance (at least at this time) and I also think that harlequin is not a good name for a boa constrictor appearance. As I said, I have no problem considering these boas as a lineage, but I personally don’t think that the name “harlequin” can be rightly applied to the lineage either, again because the name is not appropriate. The problem is that it is already a word with a specific application to snakes, in use for centuries.
Some of the boas in this lineage are very good looking. Some of the crosses with the orange-tail boas are spectacular. It’s possible that future selective breeding may tease out an interesting trait or two. Considering that the project is really just barely into a second generation, it’s really a new project; starting in 1996, they are now at the F2 generation, not the F3 generation. It usually takes about 10-12 years or so to take a boa breeding project to the F3 generation and that’s with luck, so they may be ahead of schedule. Plus, breeding one of the founders to a orange-tail boa didn’t make things any clearer; there are no valid statements that can be made about “harlequins” based on that breeding--the potential influence of the orange-tail gene on color and pattern, even in the “normals” in the clutch is just too great. [Some of the babies should have been orange-tail/harlequins, what did they look like?]
It’s a cool thing when you find yourself working with snakes that have an inheritable appearance that doesn’t fit any of the generic descriptive terms (i.e. albino, leucistic, striped, etc) and you get to name it. Steve Hammond’s choice of “arabesque” to describe his boa morph is a great example of a successful coined name for a definable inheritable appearance that has gained popular use and acceptance (despite the fact that the definition of “arabesque” is not a particularly apt literal description of the appearance.) “Harlequin” has a similar feel, but the difference is that it is already the name of a snake—and a very different kind of snake--“arabesque” was not.
I’d say that the validity of the “harlequin” appearance will be demonstrated by future breedings, or perhaps by the Magees providing more information on the actual range of appearances in their clutches of babies. Its validity will be a real and quantifiable fact, and not based on anyone’s opinion. As for the name “harlequin,” in the end, it’s not my opinion or anyone else’s opinion that will make this name sink or swim. It will be the general acceptance or rejection of the public over time. If you don’t think it’s an appropriate name then don’t use it.
Tracy’s and my point is that the common names of snakes, including the names of appearances, should, whenever possible, be informative and appropriate.
