Ultra Mystery...

[Kat]

(I am not sure but it seems we are climbing a very slippery slope if we explore this hypo being an allele to amel possiblity)

Better to explore and find the answer than to just sit around scratching our heads like idiots. (Okay, so we still might wind up scratching our heads after numerous pairings, but it's worth a shot, IMO.)

-Kat

 

[Serpwidgets]

I can't wait to try to explain to people that if you breed a GoldDust to an Amber you will just get Caramels, but breed it to a Butter and you will get Ambers.

And when they ask what those Ambers are het for, my head will burst into flames.

Does breeding GoldDust to GoldDust give you Siamese cats?

This is why I wanted to make a genetics chapter that explains it from the ground up. IMO my book's Quick Genetics section will become more and more valuable as these types of new mutants are discovered. If you look at it in the way everyone likes to think of recessive traits, it's a bunch of total nonsense. If you look at it the "right" way, it totally falls into place.

What is the correct term for these dark eyed Hypo/Amels if they are a result of the Ultra being on the same allele as Amel if they are au? Are they het for both Ultra and Amel? This would be confussing since double hets are usually on different alleles and normal looking How about half het for Ultra and amel? LOL There must be another term for it when they show a mixed phenotype between the two.

I don’t see how they could be Homo for Ultra and Amel. Are they homo utlra/amels? Is it possible for a corn to be double homo for Ultra and Amel if they are on the same allele? uuaa. How about triple homo uuaaau or what ever the au would be considered? This also doen’t seem possible if they are on the same allele.

The correct terminology is: (see also, page 18 of my book)
When a gene pair is made of two identical copies, it is homozygous.
When a gene pair is made of two different copies, it is heterozygous.
(Those are the only two cases that are possible. It is also impossible for them to be double homo or double hetero on a single locus.)

Therefore, Homozygotes are:
AA
aa
uu

and Heterozygotes are:
Aa
Au
au


It's the same situation as Motley Stripe. Check out the "Mag" demonstration of alleles on pages 16-17.

 

[Serpwidgets]

Also, I would suggest calling it "dilute" for the time being. IMO psuedo or quasi don't fit the bill... whatever it is, it's not fake. I don't think we should call motley "quasi-stripe or psuedo-stripe." And IMO the appearance of "hypo" anywhere in the name is just a bad idea right now. "Dilute" would avoid any confusion between the several differing lines of "Ultra" and "Ultra Hypo" and other stuff being thrown around, some of which may be completely unrelated to what we're looking at here.

I'll have to go back again and read up on Rat/Mouse conventions, but they do have this situation, there is a dilute allele to their amelanism, which is why I had been suggesting for a while now that one of these many "new hypos" might turn out to be an allele to amel and confuse everyone half to death. (mooohahahaha!)

I guess I should be grateful that people are actually taking the idea seriously... even if we're wrong about this one, eventually it's gonna happen.

 

[Serpwidgets]

In mice, the "Extreme Dilute" and "Albino" are alleles.

The homozygous Albino is white with pink eyes.

The homozygous "Extreme Dilute" has very light gray fur, but it has black eyes.

When "Extreme Dilute" is crossed with Albino, the offspring have black eyes, and are almost completely white. (They take on an in-between appearance.)

 

[elaphe4herps]

Wow, I left for a few hours, and this entire Ultra debate has been put to rest? Sheesh! You guys sure do work fast! I am starting to get excited about the possibility of a gene sharing the amel locus.

So let me get this straight Chuck. If the animal is AA it's normal, Aa would be het amel , aa would indicate homo amel. Thats easy. Now if the animal is uu, it's ultra (emtreme dilute) and therefore Au would also look like uu, right? So, what does an au animal look like? ultra phenotype, but het amel? :shrugs:

I am not real close (location-wise and relationship-wise) to be in the position to ASK for an ultra or het breeding loan, but I would definetly take anyone up that offers . I would be most willing to help solve this mystery and wouldn't even be interested in the siblings. I just want to be able to say that I helped :cheers:! I would be able to get at least 3, maybe 4 clutches with a male.

 

[SODERBERGD]

ultra motley X anerythristic A

Walter will have to tell us who the father of this anerythristic is/was. The mother of this anerythristic was one of those ruby freckled snows. Hence, the anerythristic is at least het. for amelanistic.

Results:
eight amelanistics
six "normals"
three hypos (?ultras?)

 

[Serpwidgets]

Now if the animal is uu, it's ultra (emtreme dilute) and therefore Au would also look like uu, right? So, what does an au animal look like? ultra phenotype, but het amel? :shrugs:

I'm thinking it would go like this:
Genotype "uu" ("Dilute" phenotype)

Genotype "au" ("Extreme Dilute" phenotype)

(Borrowing Joe's and Kat's images from earlier in the thread...)

Genotype "Au" would look:
Totally normal if "u" is recessive to "A",
Totally UltraHypo if "u" is dominant over "A."
Something between if "u" and "A" are codominant to each other.
:shrugs:

-----

huneymonkey, what was "5 is an Ultra hypo het Motley poss amel. Actually now that the eggs hatched, I don't believe she is het amel." bred to? And what are the results so far?

 

[huneymonkey]

She was bred to

an Opal male from Rich. The results are they all look like this one. 12 eggs total. They look somewhat like the mother did as a hatchling.

 

[Hurley]

OK, I can't look at this thread and interpret it without making a spread sheet...so here it is. This is my interpretation of all of the reported results within this thread regarding ultra. Colored entries are the same snake/clutch. From what I see here, it follows Serp's theory to a 'T'. Every result could be explained by Ultra being an allele to Amel.

(last updated 8-1-04)

I need to look back through and make sure everything is there and correct, but that's how I read the information presented.

p.s. if I didn't know who was who, I just plugged one in mother and one in father...usually with the ultra as the father if it wasn't stated.

 

[Serpwidgets]

So, based on that, all of the following corns (which are either amel or het amel) would have to be het for Ultra...

Kat's Lavender (from Don S)
Shiver's Amel
Shiver's Hypo
Shiver's Amel het Caramel
Shiver's Butters and Caramels
Rich Z's Caramel Motley
Rich Z's Bloodred from Don Soderberg
Don S's Butter
Don S's Anery (from Walter Smith's Ruby-freckled)
Jason's Opals

...meaning the gene was all over the place, yet it never showed itself in any of these bloodlines.

Or, it's an allele to amel. This seems like a slam dunk at this point, but I'd like to hear if Paul H has any alternative ideas.

 

[huneymonkey]

I also bred the butter motley male to a few females het butter and a normal het butter.

 

[SODERBERGD]

Ultra motley X ultra motley

I bred these two ultra motleys together. Only got four good eggs, but the offspring were three ultra motleys and one ?amber ultra?. If you agree that the gold colored motley in this picture is a caramel variant, check this out. The male that sired this ?amber ultra? is the same male that I bred to the butter. Over 20 babies there and none were caramel variants. Shrug?

 

[elaphe4herps]

I can only see two possibilities there Don. Either your luck with the ultra motley X butter breeding was less than favorable (actually sucked ), or you have actually found a new form of anerythrism/xanthism/what-ever-you-want-to-call-it :shrugs:

 

[ecreipeoj]

I need to look back through and make sure everything is there and correct, but that's how I read the information presented.

Nice spread sheet! The only thing that I saw that was left out was that Rich Z's Blood had to be het for Amel, even though he did not know it. Amels and hypomels were produced in this clutch.

The evidence does seem overwhelming that Ultra and Amels are on the same allele. 100% of the time these hypomels have been produced with an Ultra X Amel breeding. The chances that every Ultra was also homo for Hypo and/or every Corn bred to the Ultras was het for Hypo and/or Ultra, is statistically very improbably if not completely impossible.

 

[ecreipeoj]

Here are some pics of the ones I got from Mike from an Ultra Motley het Amel to an Ultra het Motley and Amel pairing.

Pic 1 Is the Butter motley which should answer Joes question

This is not exactly what I was wondering about. “True” Butter Corns or “True” Butter Motleys can be produced from Shivers line of Ultras because the Amel, Caramel and Motley genes are in the mix. I was wondering what the difference would be in the phenotypes of Butter Corns and "Hypomel" Caramel Corns. We can call these same allele genes “Dilute” or “Hypomels” or what ever. Dilute in mammals is similar to hypos in reptiles, except that a dilute gene seems to dilute the base color of the animal into a different shade of color and is not tied to the black pigment.

The evidence strongly suggest that Ultra and Amels are on the same allele. There seems to be three phenotypes and the genotype combos to match up with the phenotypes are aa, uu, and au. Add in the Motley gene and three phenotypes also seem to be present. Now add in the Caramel gene and I would think that there would also be three phenotypes. A problem I see is that the Standard Hypo gene is in the mix as well and any and all of them could be homo for hypo.

I see some defendant differences in some of the “Amber” Corns and “GoldDust” Corns or Ultra Caramels. True Amber Corns can be produced from Shivers line. They would simply be Homo for Hypo and Caramel. I would guess that they would be the ones with some remaining black around the blotches. The “GoldDust” Corns do not have much if any remaining black. The confusing part is that some of these “Amber” Corns that have the retained black are reportedly out of Ultra X Ultra breedings and should be Homo for Ultra and not have any black.

What if they are actually out of Hypomel X Hypomel that were het for Caramel? They could in fact be true Amber Corns and not carry the Ultra gene at all. Shivers did not know that the Ultra and Amel gene were on the same allele, so he would assume that all Ultra looking corns were Homo Ultra, but this is not the case. Some of the “Ambers” out of the “Ultra” X “Ultra” breedings may only be true Amber Corns because they are acutally out of Hypomel X Hypomel breedings.

They do seem to be more yellow than regular Amber Corns, but the Ultra line comes from Brown and Yellow Corns. Perhaps the cause for the Amber Corns from this line being more yellow is simply that they are getting a double dose of normal yellow genes from both sides. Both lineages (Caramel and Ultra) come from corns that were high yellow Corns.

 

[huneymonkey]

Thanks for the explanation Joe, I think I am on the same page now.
Jason

 

[ecreipeoj]

Corn Snake Jargon 101

What do you guys like so far as far as names go for these same allele het Amel and het Ultras?

So far we have:
Pseudohypo

I can add a variation of that one.
Pseudomel

Quasimels

Dilute

Hypomels
I thought of a variation of this one too.

Ultramel
The hypo part is left out and it links to the Ultra Hypo better.

 

[Clint Boyer]

I've been skim reading this thread, but has Ultra been proven co-dominant to amel on the same allele?

 

[Hurley]

Ultramel has a decent ring to it, plus it just runs the players together (like motley-striped). Hypomel would imply standard hypo + amel.

I don't like the pseudo name very well. Pseudo means fake or false, sham, spurious, imposter, etc....kind of a bad connotation for something that isn't fake or false at all, it just is. It's different, it's combined, it's a halvsie, whatever. Problem with pseudomel or pseudoultra is that invariably it will be shorted to just pseudo. Someone on the want ads will advertise "Pseudo corns" and then not only does it sound like it's a fake morph, it sounds like it's a fake corn snake or an imposter, hybrid or whatever.

IMO, a name combining the players would be a better choice.

 

[Kat]

I've been skim reading this thread, but has Ultra been proven co-dominant to amel on the same allele?

Nope... it's still a hypothesis at this point. Other hypotheses are welcome as well.

And I vote for Ultramel too. It's probably the best option out of the group.

-Kat