Poll: are you going to call "bloodred" anything else?

No, you're twisting my meaning to suit your interpretation.

They were originally considered normal, but no mention was made of the possibility of an unusual ventral. It may have gone unnoticed.

Selective breeding was used to enhance the look and the clear ventral came about.

By definition, a simple recessive gene can not show it's mutant effects on the normal gene. Outcrossed Bloodreds often show an abnormal ventral possibly caused by the mutant clear ventral gene, thus disqualifying it as a simple recessive.

P.S.
My point is that nothing here is proven. It may be reproducable but there are still many unknowns here.

I posted that quote as an example of what, as far as I've seen, a large majority of us thought (and many still do think) about the morph.

As a trait, it's many, many times "more proven" than Motley was when Dr Bechtel announced it was a simple recessive.

In my own observations, and take this for what it is worth, some of the people who post on a frequent basis seem to have a very high level of intellect. That’s fine and kudos to you but really, you are only scaring the average Joe with the high-powered words and meanings. If we keep it as simple as possible, we will all enjoy the hobby together.

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This is a very sad statement on the lack of ambition in our generation if coming across new terminology when researching a new subject is a total shock and is enough to make you say, "Oh my God, there are new words involved? Eek. Run away! Run away! I'll never understand it." And honestly? If they don't want to learn the language, they could stick with trinket rat snakes (do they have even amel in them yet?) or just pick a color they like and enjoy a wonderful snake for what it is. Beautiful.

When I first got into corns, the main reason WAS because there was so much variety in colors and patterns. Admittedly, I knew what homozygous and heterozygous meant already, but the term "anerythristic" was certainly never whispered across my sound space in my entire lifetime prior to getting an anery corn. Any time you enter a new hobby, there is new terminology to be learned.

As far as keeping it simple...I agree, that's why it'd be nice if the "pattern gene portion of bloodreds" had a name other than "the pattern gene portion of bloodreds that diffuses the sides, clears the belly, stretches the head pattern". Looking at the info presented so far, I believe the pattern portion is a variably expressive co-dominant simple allelic gene until proof is presented to disprove the theory. It is the theory that makes the most sense to me to relate the currently achieved results from presented breedings and results, so that's what I'll stick with for now.


This really has been fun; it's good practice to stretch the synapses every once in a while. Gotta love a forum where all can express their opinions in a mature manner (with varying levels of vehemence) without resorting to name-calling and mud slinging. That is certainly a rarity in the cyber world. This has been a fun debate. A postive point here is that we've seen just about every position on this subject presented, dissected, and addressed in one form or another. The info (as we understand it thus far) is all here, now it's up for all to make up their own minds.


As far as my own position:

I, for one, will call bloodreds "Bloodreds"...but if they aren't red, they aren't bloods and they aren't bloodreds in Hurley's world. Since I don't have to sell six million hatchlings a year and I do this as a hobby and because I love genetics and explaining it to people, I guess I can exercise my freedom of speech and refer to the gene as "diffused" (sorry, Darin, but I can't get into Episkiastic...I know it means overshadow/eclipse, but that's not how I personally see the gene acting).

I feel it'll be a very useful tool in explaining genetics to people who have a mental block and feel that "I can't learn it, I ain't smart enough, I'll never understand." It's a tool, a more descriptive term, a refinement of a portion of 'bloodred', no more, no less. Pewters will be pewters, the rest will garner names in their time. The only thing it really changes for me is that "bloodreds" that aren't blood red will not be called that (and I wouldn't feel like I was scamming some unknowing soul with a bloodred that wasn't) and I'll have a term for the pattern when I'm explaining corn morphs and genetics to others.

Sorry, but guess I couldn't stay away long! Want to apologize as well for my previous long-winded responses.

1. Hurley, excellent post top to bottom, I'm leaning more towards epi. (not the whole episkiastic though)

2. Serp, I love your genetics 'lectures'! I can't wait to get into 7th grade science (currently teach 8th grade) and use my corns, hands on, to teach genetics to my students.

3. Just to add to my list of snakes that have many different names, but are genetically the same thing, I need to clarify . . . Silver Queen ghosts, Pastel Motley ghosts, and ghosts are all Anery A ghosts correct? (Except for the motley included in the pastel motley)

D80

Sorry Don, I thought your "out crossed bloodreds" were F2's with the Blood pattern from Bloodred X Non-Bloodred pairings. I believe Rich has used the term "grade B" when he has animals that have the Blood pattern, but may not be so red.
I don't think teaching people about bloodreds will be like teaching kids that 7 is a number coming from dividing 21 by 3. It is not that complicated. It is a little more like teaching people....

Wind is a verb that means to turn something.
Wind is a noun that means moving air.

So which is it? It's both. That's what I am saying and have been saying for a long time. Why do you insist that it has to be one or the other?

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I think it is foolish to think that this will be as simple as changing the names on our deli cups and websites.
If you really want to be more precise about what to sell your Bloodred X Normal hatchlings as, why not label them as Normals het Blood Pattern? You will have to do no less explaining than if they were labeled Normals het Diffuse. Or you could just bite the bullet and sell them as Bloodred X Normals.

One fact that you have to face is, yes a lot of the buyers out there don't read forums... but even worse a lot of breeders out there don't read forums. These are probably the people that have websites stating that bloodreds are always solid red. I just foresee many, many questions coming up over the issue of bloodred and diffuse, more questions that come up over bloodred if it were left alone.
I still stand by the arguement that even if you change the name, inquiring minds will still want to know what a bloodred is. People who want to know about Diffuse corns will also want to know what a Bloodred is. So why teach them Step #1 What a Diffuse is, then teach them Step # 2 what a bloodred is? You can just skip a step, teach them what really is involved in the Genetics of a Bloodred and they will understand what they are getting into with the mixing and matching of Bloodreds. It's an explaination that will eventually have to happen anyway so why not skip step # 1. You are just adding more work to an already complicated issue.
I almost agree with you that the labled het situation could be better handled, although I would still play it safe and label them as the cross that they are (Blood X Carmel or whatever). The one problem I do have with it is the fact that Bloodred pattern 1) Does seem to have an effect in F1 animals, 2) Does seem to loose its strength when repeatedly outcrossed. Both still make me uncomfortable selling any animals as "het" Blood. Will we get to the point that a plain belly will be all that is required for one to be called a diffuse corn? I see some F2's, F3's, Fwhatevers that don't look like Bloods at all except for the fact that they have plain bellies and perhaps a little bit thicker background color on thier head. Of course we see some motleys that don't look like motley's dorsally, but just not as often. It acts more like normal variance. It does not seem to be a result of out-crossing motley. Bloodred Pattern however, is starting to look like the deminishing effect dorsally does have a relation to outcrossing.
No offense meant, however, I am also seeing an ironic discrepancy that ones who are normally dead set against new "names" and put up a large fight on how confusing it is and how it just begs for people to get ripped off all of a sudden change thier song when they want to name something. Changing horses in more ways than one.

Outcrossed. . .

Clint, your point about recessives not being expressed is exactly why that is the only corn I give that name to. Actually, I'm thinking about it for the caramel gene too, but no need to open that stinky can of worms here, huh? Anyway, I believe we have alot to learn about the bloodred morph or should we call it the bloodred "syndrome"? lol.

Written seven years ago, what I describe on my site as an outcrossed bloodred still applies in my opinion. See excerpt from my site below:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Bloodred Corn Snake (Out-Crossed)
Pantherophis guttata guttata
The bloodred corn is one of the few if not the only exception to predictable recessive traits. When a bloodred corn is bred to other recessive or normal corns, the first generation of offspring resemble bloodreds, but are not pure bloodred corns. Usually, the belly of the outcrossed corns have black on them. This is a sign they are not pure bloodred corns.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Anyway, I believe we have alot to learn about the bloodred morph or should we call it the bloodred "syndrome"? lol.

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Don,
This is my point also. You are probably one of the worlds largest breeders of Bloods, if anyone had it 'nailed down' it would be you.
I just can't see the Blood traits acting as a simple recessive. This whole discussion revolves around the fact that we don't have all of the pieces of the puzzle. I can't see changing history based on someones opinion.

They don't act as a simple recessive, on that you have my full agreement and a hearty applause.

However, they do seem to act as a variable co-dominant trait. An animal het for the gene (has one pattern mutant gene and one normal gene) shows some change in the pattern, but does not exhibit the full pattern seen in ones homozygous for the pattern gene.

Breed a Pewter to a charcoal, you get hets which exhibit varying degrees of pattern change ranging from nearly normal to nearly pewter. Breed F1's back, you get a fairly predictable ratio of 1/4 pewters, 3/4 not...as predictable as Murphy will allow, at any rate.

Life would be so much simpler if the het form was the same in all animals, for example, if they all had 1/2 of their belly wiped clean or something. Those animals that are really het but show a large amount of the pattern throw a monkey in the works by getting themselves misidentified as homozygous animals.

I don't profess here to have the be all, end all answer with absolute proof. No one does, but the results we've been getting seem to match the pattern of codominance.

If this pattern trait were purely a selectively bred trait (like Okeetee phase, for example), then outcrossing it to a plain normal and then crossing the F1's would not give you the same pattern back in the F2's in 1/4 of the animals. It seems that most people can look at a hatchling and call it yes or no, so to me that looks like we are recovering a gene. My opinion.

As far as the changing horses/suddenly getting the urge to rename things/etc. goes, I personally don't feel this is a renaming of the bloodred morph. Bloodreds are bloodreds. I feel it is giving a name to what appears to be a specific codominant pattern gene that was heretofore unnamed, but lumped into the bloodred 'syndrome'. All bloods carry the diffusion/epi/whatever gene, but not all diffused/epi/whatever corns are bloodreds. If the hypererythric tendencies are bred out of a line of bloods, they are no longer bloods (to me).

Hurley,
Your ideas sound very good. Not much I can argue with there.

Serp,

I'm not going to play semantics here.

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Isn't the meaning of my words exactly what you are using in your arguement?

Since you like Webster:

se-mantics, n. sing. the study of meaning

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Serp:

That implies no simple genetic trait, recessive or otherwise. The *meaning* in that post was pretty clear

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I thought I was very precise in my statement. There was no hidden meaning.....sorry if you 'red' it that way.

carol said:

No offense meant, however, I am also seeing an ironic discrepancy that ones who are normally dead set against new "names" and put up a large fight on how confusing it is and how it just begs for people to get ripped off all of a sudden change thier song when they want to name something. Changing horses in more ways than one.

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The "Okeetee" debate is not the same thing. One of the key differences is that there's no good "brown bag" test where people could identify a group of 50 "Pure Okeetee Locality" corns when it's mixed in with another 50 "Okeetee but not 'pure' locality animals." A small number of people might claim they can, but for the most part, the two are essentially the same thing.

The only people who think otherwise are very well-educated about the locality, and the differences between the two usages. It's a whole different ballgame there.

There is a very significant and obvious difference between a solid red patternless or nearly patternless snake, and what many "bloodreds" are today. Even someone who has never seen any snakes before could intuitively pick up on the differences.

Also, it was suggested that a different name be used to qualify "Hunt Club" corns, and I was saying that was a good idea.

I am not the moderator of this discussion, or any other, but I think we would all be helped if we could get through a few of the issues that constantly seem to be hindering us, one at a time. Sound good?

I'll start, then, if someone else sees an issue (I mean a spacific aspect of this discussion) upon which we all seem to be in agreement, feel free to clearly state the issue, so we can all sign off on it. If we do this, maybe we can weed out some of the extraneous stuff that keeps getting repeated, and we can focus more clearly on the actual differences that need discussion.

Here is my first aspect to which I believe we can all agree:

"No one is trying to change the names "bloodred" or "pewter." Those morphs are time honored and proven to be accurate, effective, and marketable. No one wants to stop calling bloodreds and pewters by their respective names."

I absolutely, 100% agree with the above, and I believe everyone else here does too. If, any one disagrees, please say so. Otherwise, let's move on to the next universally agreeable subject line!

Clint Boyer said:

I thought I was very precise in my statement. There was no hidden meaning.....sorry if you 'red' it that way.

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LOL I can't believe we're having this discussion.

There are 5 possible positions that I can think of:

1- there is a simple recessive trait involved in bloodreds.

2- there is a simple codominant trait involved in bloodreds.

3- there is a simple dominant trait involved in bloodreds.

4- there is not a simple genetic trait involved in bloodreds.

5- there is not enough evidence to support any of the above.

I'm lost. To me that quote clearly indicated you were taking position #4. What is your current position?

As long as we're at it, Darin, my position is #2, and I believe there is a gigantic body of evidence out there to back it up.

I think there are still quite a few people who are taking either #4 or #5.

Not to scatter the subject here, but I ran across the word "nebula" today and thought it was interesting...

It doesn't suggest anything specific. It just means "cloudy" (the dictionary meaning is "a cloud, mist.")

Nobody will get an expectation out of it. Nebulas are beautiful heavenly objects. When I hear the word, it sounds like it could be an interesting morph.

There seem to be two camps as to what is happening to the pattern:
1- the pattern is smeared/reduced/missing to begin with.

2- the pattern is there but gets washed over by other colors.

Either of these interpretations will fit with the meaning of "nebula." It is "misted away" (atomized like water from a squirt bottle) or it is clouded over, whichever you prefer. It doesn't specify a mechanism or a look, yet at the same time, the picture and the word go together very well.

It's also a Latin word, it's not 20 miles long, and it's easy to spell and pronounce.

And, as a bonus, "nebulous" comes from it, which means "indistinct, vague." That is how a lot of people seem to feel about predicting what the hatchlings will grow up to look like, as well as any attempt to create an all-inclusive definition of the pattern.

Serp,

I agree, but I think (because of the variability of the appearance of hets) that the effects of the codominance is not fully defineable at present. There is simply too much variation in animals het for this trait to say anything along the lines of "All animals that are a result of a bloodred x normal are going to look like X." I know, because I tried and failed in front of everyone!

However, the issue of codominance does not take any of that into account. If the affects of the gene are shown on a scale of 0 to 100 (0 = Normal, and 100 = homozygous), then any animal het for the gene, expressing a phenotype found on that scale from 1 to 99 would have to be seen as being the result of a codominant gene.

I'm not certain everyone understands that about the generic concept of codominance, and, that being the case, some therefore have difficulty in applying those principles to the issue of bloodred. As with anything, it takes some time for everyone to get on the same page.



However ...

Is there any other issue concerning this discussion about which we can all agree?

I can think of a few more, I believe, but I am hoping for some "class participation" here, folks!

Serp:

Yeah, that's getting strange.

#5


Darin:

I agree so far!

Perhaps if we have some solid definitions, it would be easier to know what we are trying to sign off on.

What exactly are the identifiable markers that would be attributed to the Diffused or Episkiastic gene or influence? If 100 snakes are in a bucket and one is a Diffused, how do you know when you pick it up that this is actually what it is?

Can we start here?

The problem is going to be that even when breeding Blood Red to Blood Red, there is so much variation between individuals that I think this is going to be particularly tough to nail down.

I think we are going to need some sort of weighted scale which takes into consideration abdominal color (how much white, orange, or black), side pattern (absent, somewhat present, completely present), head pattern and/or color (aberrant vs normal pattern, or orangish colored vs gray colored), and dorsal coloration (amount of black bordering visible on the blotches). And this is going to be from observing babies, so the entire weighted scale may have to be completely different when we are talking about adults.

For instance, if you have an adult Vanishing Pattern normal colored animal, how will you distinguish this from a Blood Red? What about those poor luckless souls who may breed Blood Red and Vanishing Stripe together? When the F2s hatch out, what is the hand guide they can use to determine which babies are which? They have their labels all printed out, but which ones go to which snakes?

Rich

Last year, I bred a bloodred to a keys' corn. You should have seen the babies' bellies. Think about the pattern on most keys' corns. That was a nightmare. How will one tell the bloods from the keys' animals in the next generation?

Don't go there Don. The Upper Keys Corns are going to be a real rocky road in this conversation. Trust me on this.

Suggestion noted. . .

. . and honored.

I think the best ID is made from the belly. There will be a gray area in the case of some extreme hets and some not so great homo specimens, but it seems like the most consistent thing is to look for signs of checkering along the edges of the belly. My understanding is that the ones with square markings on the edges of the belly are the ones that are likely to throw some "normal" offspring even when bred to really great specimens. (Thus, they're hets.)

If you do it differently, how do you currently ID what you call bloodreds, pewters, etc? (I'm not trying to set anyone up here. I want to know if I'm missing anything, and I bet we'll all learn something. )

When you are setting a goal of having a perfect or near-perfect ID method, keep in mind that it's still a good idea to re-sex anything you get because we're not even 100% on our gender-ID methods. I bought a "female" adult lavender that was probed in the store while I waited, and "she" turned out to be a male. This wasn't a fly-by-night little pet shop, it was a professional herp store. I've seen several other instances of mis-sexed corns... it happens more than we'd like it to, and it happens to the best of us, sometimes even when we double-check ourselves. Don't get me wrong, it's good to strive for perfection, but don't get caught up in unrealistic expectations.

As was hinted at above the belly ID can be problematic when mixing with other "checkerless" stuff like Milksnake phase, Motley/stripe, and Keys corns. (LOL, I don't know the meaning of "don't go there." That's where all the fun in life comes from! ) But there are plenty of similar situations, such as the following pairings:

Amels het hypo

Anerys het caramel

Blizzards het anery

Normals het hypo/sunkissed

Striped F2s from "striped X bloodred"

Anything that's possibly homo for both anery and lavender, who knows yet which way this will swing, or if it will even go different ways in different lines...

Also, is the same "belly situation" already possible with Motley X Keys when you can get normal dorsal patterns on some motleys? (Dunno, maybe not, motleys seem to have a better grip on clearing the belly so far... :shrugs: )

What's the best way to label any of these offspring? IMO the answer is to do the same we currently do with the above situations: do the best you can, err on the side of caution, and try to sort it out with further breeding trials if you really want/need to know.

From what I understand, the same types of situations exist in horses, mice, etc. I'll have to see if they've found any good ways to deal with these situations. The reality is that things like this are going to pop up, and the only way we're going to successfully avoid them is to ignore genetic traits altogether.