Ultra Mystery...

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

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?

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

Originally Posted by Hurley

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.

Originally Posted by huneymonkey

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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