The statements in red below are copied & pasted from Joe's KS ad.
1) The belly patterns of Tesseras are inconsistent. A combination of belly patterns between Corn Snakes and Striped California King Snakes are produced. Plain bellies, checker bellies and a combination of the two are common. There is no genetic reason for this.
2) The belly patterns of the Non-Tessera siblings are inconsistent. The same belly patterns on Tesseras can be produced. We should get a checkered Corn Snake belly pattern, but the plain belly pattern of the Striped California King Snake is having influence. There is no genetic reason for this.
If you buy into that theory
The same case can be made with sunkissed. Does this make sunkissed a hybrid too????
Is it from a Cali king?? Or perhaps a European Rat???
Or did the Cali king inherit it from the European Rat??
Does this make my Landrace Lava/het sunkissed suspect??
I really like Chuck Pritzel's last post on hybrid markers which I copied & pasted below in blue.
Originally Posted by Serpwidgets
After thinking about this some more, I have to wonder if head and belly patterns in general are that useful anymore in trying to figure out if something is a hybrid. I suspect the reason they were of interest in the first place is because they tend to magnify any otherwise subtle changes to the pattern. So if something was altered on the pattern, you would see it first on the head and the belly.
But I think especially in the last 10 or so years many of us have been purposely breeding belly-changing and head-changing snakes into the gene pool. A lot of people have been pursuing better bloodreds, and working with cinder and other upper keys corns that probably weren't nearly as popular before, etc. It's to be expected because we as a hobby are typically in pursuit of whatever doesn't look like the snakes we have today.
I really have to agree with that!
I love working with Ultra and Tessera. I will continue to whether or not they are EVER proven to be hybrid.