Masking?

[Charlie]

I am starting a few projects this year that will be producing some quad hets for several things. My question is...what can I expect out of these babies when bred back together.

Use this pairing for example:
Hypo het caramel, anery X Amel het caramel, hypo, pos anery.

I know that I will get some ambers out of this in the F1 but does anery mask the caramel? What should I expect? Will I be stumped when the clutch hatches? What about the amel gene in the F2....will I get animals homo hypo butter?

I am just curious what everyone else is experiencing with their projects were masking is present and their results.

 

[ecreipeoj]

Great question that I wish I could answer. I have the same questions about Homo Charcoal and Lavender.

I have several known Amels that are homo for Hypo and I can certainly see the Hypos influence, but whether you could see this if you didn’t know it was a possibility is very questionable. It is very hard to describe, but they seem to be brighter along with a different shade of color that almost looks flat compared to the normal color but it is bright, which doesn’t make much since, but that is what I seem to be seeing. It may be a slight dilute situation of the normal Amel colors.

I bought a pair of 2004 Striped Butters from Rich and he told me the female was super light, which she was. Now that she is almost grown, I swear she looks to be homo for hypo too.

Here is a photo of a known Hypo Striped Amel poss Lavender. She sure looks very different than any of my other Amel Stripes.

 

[Charlie]

Thanks Joe for the awesome picture!

Well the reason I asked is because I have a female that I know is an amel. But when I showed her to someone...their first comment was "what a nice hypo". I know that she is het hypo but could she be homo instead? How would I tell if she was homo? Would there be more hypos produced?

I attached a pic of my girl but you can also see her in the photo gallery.

 

[Piper]

I have heard Anery does mask Carmel.

 

[ecreipeoj]

Thanks Joe for the awesome picture!

Well the reason I asked is because I have a female that I know is an amel. But when I showed her to someone...their first comment was "what a nice hypo". I know that she is het hypo but could she be homo instead? How would I tell if she was homo? Would there be more hypos produced?

I attached a pic of my girl but you can also see her in the photo gallery.

If you showed her to me, I would not mistake her for a Hypo. The whole Amel masking Hypo thing is difficult. I know Amel does not completely mask Hypo, but nobody can really just look at an Amel or a photo of one and say, “Yes, that Amel is also homo for Hypo”, because of the extreme variation in the Amel Group. So what good it is? We might be able to make some educated guess if the possibility of the hypo gene is present.

I personally think that Hypo dilutes an Amel and therefore changes its normal color slightly, plus most Hypomels have very little white. This is basically true for Lavamels too. The color is diluted even more by the Lava gene.

It should be very easy to tell if your snake is Homo or het for Hypo by the numbers of offspring like you stated. If you breed her to a known homo Hypo, the numbers will be 100% Hypos if it she homo for hypo and 50% if het. It does not look like she is homo to me from the photo and I would always go with what the breeder told you which is het Hypo.

My situation with the pair of Striped Butters is different. Rich doesn’t tell you if anything is poss or het for anything if you don’t pay for the known genes, so I can make a guess based upon their look. I think most of the time with Rich, it is just poss het genes, that will show themselves if bred to the right mate. I will have to get a photo of the pair of Striped Butters I am talking about, but the difference is quite dramatic and seems out side the relm of normal variation. The difference is as dramatic as comparing a Striped to a Hypo Striped. The same kind of comparison can be made with the difference between an Amel Striped and Hypo Amel Striped. The colors are diluted or lighten considerably. There is more to the Hypo gene than just reducing the black. It lightens the entire snake.

Here is a photo of one of my known Hypomels poss het for Striped Lavender. It seems very obvious when we know the Amel is homo for Hypo, but what if we didn’t know? Would we suspect something was up with this Amel? I know in this case because the breeding was a Hypo het Striped Lav X Hypo het Striped Lav. Both parents proved to be het for Amel as well. The Hypo Amel Striped above was from a breeding of a Hypo Striped het Lav X Hypo Striped het Lav. They too, both proved to be het for Amel as too.

 

[ecreipeoj]

Here is a comparison photo of the pair of Striped Butters that I was talking about. I also took a quick photo of a comparison between a Striped and Hypo Striped Corn. If I took a comparison photo of the above Hypo Striped Amel and a Striped Amel, the same diluted look is apparent. Unfortunately, all of my Amel Stripes are opaque at the moment. I think you can see why I suspect the female Striped Butter may be homo for Hypo. She just has that same diluted look as I see in the Hypo Amel Striped.

The only way I will know for sure, however; is to test her to a Homo Hypo that I will see in the offspring. The only way to do this is to not breed her to this male, which I have already decided not to do. I had been contemplating breeding her to an Ultramel Motley het Caramel, but a Hypo Striped Lav mating would test my hypostasis and produce a very cool project at the same time. If all of the offspring from this mating were Hypo Stripes then I would know. They would also be het for Lavender Caramel which seems to be of high interest at the moment.

 

[Charlie]

Joe,
I understand what you mean. I was not doubting that what the breeder sold me as. She just looked very odd to me personally. I guess her being het caramel might add to her odd opinion.

So, now I know alot of people consider an amel without white a sunglow. Are all sunglows homo hypo or just some?

I also see the drastic difference between the two butter stripes. It is intriguing to me that they can very so differently. I would like to know your results when you get them. I will be producing some hets that could possibly produce hypo butter stripes in the future. Would be nice to see if that is what I could expect to see.

I am still confused on the whole hypo thing. Keeping all the new stuff straight while juggling the old stuff is hard. How many forms of hypo do we have now? Are there any more that we are questioning?

 

[Charlie]

The only way I will know for sure, however; is to test her to a Homo Hypo that I will see in the offspring. The only way to do this is to not breed her to this male, which I have already decided not to do. I had been contemplating breeding her to an Ultramel Motley het Caramel, but a Hypo Striped Lav mating would test my hypostasis and produce a very cool project at the same time. If all of the offspring from this mating were Hypo Stripes then I would know. They would also be het for Lavender Caramel which seems to be of high interest at the moment.

After finding out whether or not she is indeed homo hypo...would you breed her back to the butter stripe male to see if you get hypo butter stripes from the pair? Would you be able to pick out the difference in the clutch between homo hypo and regular butter stripes?

 

[Piper]

I know of 5 different types of Hypo:

Hypo
Sunkissed
Lava
Ultra
Christmas

Note: Ultra shares locus with Amel, so you can have a Ultra Caramel = Golddust. But not an "Ultra Butter" (because of the shared locus)

 

[Piper]

Slight confusion in my last post I skipped a part. Amel is co-dominant to Ultra

Ultra Caramel = Ultra + Caramel
Ultramel Caramel (Golddust) = 1 Amel & 1 Ultra + Caramel
Ultra Butter = cannot happen

 

[ecreipeoj]

After finding out whether or not she is indeed homo hypo...would you breed her back to the butter stripe male to see if you get hypo butter stripes from the pair? Would you be able to pick out the difference in the clutch between homo hypo and regular butter stripes?

I am not sure who I would breed her to if she does prove to be homo for Hypo. It seems likely that we could pick out the homo Hypo Striped Butters if her drastic difference in appearance is cause by the addition of the Hypo gene. It seems likely, due to the difference in Ambers and Caramels. Add the Amel gene to them, and we would expect something like what I am seeing. Also, we have seen a different phenotype in Hypo Sunkisseds, and I believe Hypo Amels as well. I can pick out Lavamels with 100% accuracy from their Amel Okeetee clutch mates, but what if they came from a Sunglow line? It might not be so easy then.

I only have the one pair of Striped Butters, so my first thought was I would like to produce more, but the male will be bred to Amel Stripes so I will have some nice Amel Stripes het Caramel to hold back. Out crosses are always nice to hold back for several reasons. Also, in time, The Hypo Striped het Lavender Caramels will produce some Striped Butters poss hets which will be the ultimate out crosses to hold back if you ask me.

Sometimes too much of a good thing is not as good as some of its parts. I prefer the male Striped Butters appearance over the females. Striped Ambers look pretty awesome, so the benefit to having a Corn with too many genes is the variety of offspring that you can produce in one clutch.

Check out the predicted results from the test breeding above if she proved to be homo for Hypo. The same results will be possible even if she is not, but the percentages will be much higher for most morphs. I wasn’t even thinking about the Amel gene being in the mix too. I would love to see this clutch hatch!

Male = Hypomelanistic, Stripe het. Butter, het. Amel, het. Caramel, het. Lavender
Female = Hypomelanistic, Stripe het. Butter, het. Amel, het. Caramel, het. Lavender

Offspring predicted as:

---This is a PHENOTYPE only report-----------------
27/64 Hypomelanistic, Stripe
9/64 Amelanistic, Hypomelanistic, Stripe
9/64 Amber, Stripe
3/64 Butter, Hypomelanistic, Stripe
9/64 Hypomelanistic, Lavender, Stripe
3/64 Amelanistic, Hypomelanistic, Lavender, Stripe
3/64 Amber, Lavender, Stripe
1/64 Butter, Hypomelanistic, Lavender, Stripe

What will an Striped Opal Caramel or Striped Butter Lavender look like anyway? Somewhere between an Opal Striped and Butter Striped or something else.

 

[Serpwidgets]

I think Joe is right that in certain situations we might be able to tell which are hypo amels and which are just amels. But I would also expect to not be able to see any difference in my clutches, and I'd consider any amels "75% poss het or homo hypo" unless there happens to be a huge difference (and the differences do not place a dividing line between the males and females.)

The same holds true for anery/caramel. Unless/until someone can work out a method of identifying caramel anery with any certainty, I would count any anerys as "75% poss het or homo caramel" in those clutches where both parents are het caramel.

I hatched amels that were possibly hypos last year, I couldn't have picked out if any were in fact hypos. But I do think this could depend on the individual clutch. The other wrench in the gears is that I have started to notice more and more differences between male and female clutchmates, one of them being that in most clutches males tend to look "more hypo" than females. Again, if you have all amels that are poss homo hypo and you see two different (subtle) phenotypes, make sure that the two phenotypes you're seeing are not just male versus female.