Breeding Morphs and Locality Specific Corns

[Dennis Gulla]

I am not a novice when it comes to genetics, however, I do get confused when it comes to breeding certain morphs and locality specific corns in an effort produce something new.
How did Don from South Mountain produce his line of Hypo Miami Corns? We know that Hypomelanism is a recessive genetic trait, but Miami Phase corns are a locale specific animal that displays a unique trait.
He obviously bred a Hypo corn to a Miami Phase corn. Wouldn't the results be intergrades het for hypomelanism? You can't have a corn be het for Miami phase right? This is where I get confused. Could someone explain this to me?

[Ken Harbart]

Miamis, as Okeetees, aren't exactly locality specific. Quite the contrary, they names merely describe an appearance, regardless of geographic location.

[Dennis Gulla]

Ken, could you please be a little more elaborate. Now I'm totally confused. Are you saying that if I went to the Miami/Dade County area and happened to be lucky enough to catch a wild corn, it may or may not look like the Miami Phased corns that we are accustomed to seeing?
Are the names Miami Phase and Okeetee just labels to describe snakes that were selectively bred regardless of there locality?

[carol]

It does get confusing, there is the "Miami" locality and the Miami "Phase". Same with Okeetee. It is pretty much accepted that a Miami corn should be a clean silver, black and red animal. Not all corns caught near Miami may fit this standard and not all "Miami" Phase corns have thier heritage link back to animals from this locality. I think it is pretty common that if someone is talking about a Miami Phase, they are refering to coloration and not locality.
As far as mixing the Phase with simple recessive traits it takes a long time of breeding the gene back into Miami Phase animals until you get animals that display the gene and the sought after coloration. Luck has a lot to play in this as well.
Mixing a Miami with a hypo well you could get a few animals from that clutch that look like Miamis that are het hypo if you are very lucky. But that would be unlikely.
You can take Hypo F2's from that breeding, breed them back to a Miami and you'd be closer to what you want. Again depending on luck you may have to repeat this process many times before you get what you want.
It is a long process, I am working with Motley Miamis and it has become a love/hate project. :D

[Rich Z]

You know, I'm kind of leaning more and more to thinking we might as well drop these locality specific names.

For instance, what's the chances that what we call Okeetee Corn now will even remotely resemble the same animals that Carl Kauffeld wrote about in 1957 in his Snakes and Snake Hunting book? Or Miami Phase corns that I've been selective breeding from stock I got back in the late 70s even look remotely similar to something you can still find in those small patches of wild area remaining in Miami?

Maybe those names really no longer apply to the animals we are now producing. And I guess it should not come as any surprise, as personal preferences of the people breeding them would likely lead them in different paths than nature would take them naturally. So every few generations or so, the look of the animal might become completely different from what it was a few generations ago.

And yes, I did coin the name 'Miami Phase', but perhaps in retrospect, that wasn't such a good idea. Seemed so at the time......

And certainly this is going to happen even with more generic names. For instance, my latest generation of Crimson Corns do not look like my original stock any longer. But what's better to do? Change the expectations and criteria of what makes a newer generation Crimson, or bang out yet another name to label something marginally different looking from the original?

[Dennis Gulla]

Thank you guys for clearing that up for me. I was involved with Boa Constrictors exclusively up until a couple of years ago. The separation of Morphs and locale specific animals is much more defined with Boids then it is with Colubrids.