• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

How common are recessive alleles?

B

Brich

New member
Hi,
I got a pair of 3-4 year old adults from a guy on Craigslist that he bought separately from pet stores out west. He has housed them together for 2 years and they had clutches each spring but he failed to incubate them properly and they did not hatch. The female looks like the snow corn on VMSherp but much fainter orange pigment. Perhaps she is a blizzard. The male looks like a hypomel or possibly a lava. I am brumating them now and plan to breed them in the spring. Obviously if they do not have any of each other's recessive alleles the clutch will all be wild-type in appearance. But I assume that many of the snakes that show up in pet stores are the excess offspring from breeders assembling various compound genotypes. What do you think the chances are that these will share some recessive alleles?

Thanks,

Ben
1.0 hypomel or lava
0.1 snow or blizzard
 
If you posted pics of your snakes, we could probably ID them. The recessive amelanism trait is very common. One of your snakes sounds like it's homozygous for amel already. It wouldn't surprise me if the other one is heterozygous for it. Anerythrism and hypomelanism are pretty common as hets too.
 
Snows nor blizzards have 'faint orange' pigments. They are white with yellow, and sometimes peach tones---but definitely not orange.

And I HIGHLY doubt that this guy purchased a lava at a petstore a few years ago. In fact, I'm just about willing to guarantee you that he didn't. More than likely you have a bright normal or a hypo a.

As Dean said, the chances of both of those snakes being het for amel, anery, hypo or motley are pretty good. I'd be surprised if you didn't hatch out some morphs.
 
Well, maybe the markings are faint peach instead of orange. I am new to cornsnakes, and since I have just cooled them down I am a little wary about taking them out for photos. Would you worry about handling them and exposing them to light during brumation.

I am glad to hear you think that recessives are common. My son is studying genetics in high school and I am hoping we get an interesting assortment of morphs so that we can deduce the parents' genotypes. Unfortunately, from what I have read we will not have hatchlings before he graduates.

Thanks, Ben
 
Brich said:
Well, maybe the markings are faint peach instead of orange. I am new to cornsnakes, and since I have just cooled them down I am a little wary about taking them out for photos. Would you worry about handling them and exposing them to light during brumation.

I am glad to hear you think that recessives are common. My son is studying genetics in high school and I am hoping we get an interesting assortment of morphs so that we can deduce the parents' genotypes. Unfortunately, from what I have read we will not have hatchlings before he graduates.

Thanks, Ben
Click to expand...

No doubt that photoperiod plays a role in brumation, but I think temps are more important. Exposing them to light to change water and check on them isn't going to effect brumation at all. Handling them daily probably will.

When does your son graduate high school? Corns normally take about a month (give or take) after brumation before they get down to breeding. Once the female ovulates it's about another month before eggs are laid---and then two months for them to hatch. So you're looking at 4-5 months of time after they come out of brumation before you see hatchlings.

Being that you're from Boston---I'm assuming that your son is going to graduate in early summer (June). Depending when you put those snakes down for brumation and when you bring them up you might just make it.
 
I have been following the timetable from VMS herps

http://vmsherp.com/LCBreedingCorns.htm

They suggest warming them up in the first week of March, which would mean eggs hatch in July or August. His biology class is AP so it will end with the test in the beginning of May. Oh well...

With respect to brumation, I am shooting for 50-55 degrees F in a room with the heat off, but that might be a little tricky when it gets to single digits here. Do you have a feeling for whether it is better to err on the high side or the low side? Is it more of a problem if the temperature drops to 45 or climbs to 60?
 
Breeding update

Well I know a lot more about cornsnakes and their color genes now. We bred our snow corn female with our amel male. We had 21 promising eggs and one slug. We are now in the heat of hatching and they are about half and half snow and amel, so dad is clearly a het anery. I am sure that this is pretty routine for most of you, but we are really excited. Here are some photos.
 

Attachments

  • eggs.jpg
    eggs.jpg
    182.3 KB · Views: 142
  • peekaboo.jpg
    peekaboo.jpg
    218.3 KB · Views: 141
  • Hatchling 3.jpg
    Hatchling 3.jpg
    238.4 KB · Views: 141
  • Hatchling 4.jpg
    Hatchling 4.jpg
    213.8 KB · Views: 140
What stud this year?

Well I just warmed up my snakes and am trying to decide about another round of breeding. Mom is a snow corn: amel/amel anery/anery. She weighs about 700 grams out of brumation and gobbled a mouse right away. She is shown in the top photo below.

The father of last years clutch is shown in the second photo. He is about 900 grams. You cannot see in this photo, but his eyes are red. I think that he is amel/amel anery/+. Last year's clutch was a 50:50 mix of the two types shown in an earlier post above and the next two photos below. I assume that the white ones are snows and the red ones have the same genotype as dad at these two loci. They are much brighter than he is, but I understand that the yellow pigment increases with age, so they may all grow up to look like him. Do you agree?

I am considering setting her up with the male shown in the bottom photo below. He is reported to be amel/+ anery/+. It would be fun to have a very diverse clutch, and I like the bright white between the saddles. Does anyone have any thoughts about whether this might be related to Miami Phase or just because he is young (2-3 years)?

Thanks,
Ben
 

Attachments

  • Mitsuko post.jpg
    Mitsuko post.jpg
    284.4 KB · Views: 52
  • Dorito post.jpg
    Dorito post.jpg
    291.6 KB · Views: 51
  • 10 post.jpg
    10 post.jpg
    284.9 KB · Views: 52
  • 16 post.jpg
    16 post.jpg
    125.9 KB · Views: 51
  • Stud?.jpg
    Stud?.jpg
    9.1 KB · Views: 50
Your female is a snow (honozygous amel and anery), the male you used last year is an amel het anery. The snake on the bottom looks like a Miami phase, which is a selectively bred type of normal. If he is indeed het for amel and anery, then you would get 25% of each normal het snow, amel het anery, anery het amel and snow offspring.
 
Miami Phase?

I like the lighter background of the Miami phase, so I wouldn't mind if it shows up in some of the offspring. It is described as a trait, I assume that it does not behave like a single autosomal recessive or dominant gene. but clearly people do cross interesting mutations into Miami phase snakes. Does anyone know how many genes are involved?
 
Miami phase is a selectively bred morph and the number of genes involved has not been determined. It would be similar to trying to figure out what genes cause a Doberman to be Doberman and not a Collie.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top