king snake influence in tessera morph?

Kevin - the first one looks identical to a tessera. However, I'd say the second one still looks like a hybrid to me. It definitely has corn characters, but the saddles are wrong and the head pattern is more king. Are both of those of jungle corn origin?

I guess the weird snake could be some odd wide stripe kind of thing. What were we calling that, Connect Four??

Why, if there is a DNA map for every other animal under the sun, including many snakes, is there not one for the cornsnake?

There isn't a DNA map for every other animal under the sun. The majority of the human genome was done at my university, the University of California at Santa Cruz. It took them years to accurately compose the human genome. Drosophila (fruit flys) are another organism that has had it's genome mapped, but that's because it's the guinea pig of molecular tests. There isn't even close to 1% of the species on Earth with their genomes mapped.

Originally Posted by Kevin S.

Let's say someone breeds an albino cal king to a normal corn. Breed those het jungles together and you get some albino jungles. Breed one of the albino jungles to a normal corn and you get super corns het albino...continue on with this pattern for a few generations and eventually you'll get albino snakes that have the scalation and other morphological characteristics of a corn, but they're not amel corns-they got their albinism from a cal king ancestor. It'd be much simpler with a dominant trait (like tessera) since you'd have no hets to deal with and could just breed a funky patterned offspring to a pure corn and get more of the same pattern with progressively more corn influence each time.

IF the dominant pattern mutation came from a cal king or resulted from the combination of corn and king genes, that's how it would be done. So the question isn't how could you breed away the king traits and keep the pattern, but whether or not a king would be necessary to originate the pattern in the first place. We'll never know at this point and as I said before, I don't see it being a very critical question regardless...makes for some interesting conversation though.

Sadly enough.....I'm all too familiar with the countless stolen simple recessive mutations like amelanism in the hobby mainstream. That doesn't even begin to explain the things I mentioned. Cal. king striping would be often lost immediately when successive generations of corns were introduced like they have been. The striping isn't even predictable in any given genuine Cal. king clutch, much less when constantly diluted with more cornsnakes. It also doesn't explain the solid 50-50 ratio clutches either like I have kept addressing with no replies from the hybrid theorists.

Nanci, are you confusing genomic mapping for creating a species phylogeny? If so, then yes, a lot of species have had phylogenies created for them. But even then, it's dependent upon the genes used in the phylogeny whether the phylogeny has any merit. If you use highly conserved genes, then you won't see much difference between sister taxa and it won't tell you anything about the evolutionary history of the species in question. Furthermore, a corn snake phylogeny should eventually get done, but only when someone doing research on corns gets around to writing a grant that justifies analysis as something that will benefit the scientific community. I don't know how a study on all the different color and pattern mutations in corns will net the grant money necessary to conduct such an experiment, unless of course their research is on the origin of pattern mutations (that'd be cool). Even then, if you get a grad student that only identifies and uses three loci versus a post doc or professor that uses ten or more loci in their molecular analyses, you might not be able to answer any of the questions we all have. What it could tell you though is if a larger majority of tessera or ultra-based corns group closer to gray rats and king snakes than any other morphs do. That would the the pentultimate proof necessary to say for sure that those morphs have hybrid origins.

It also doesn't explain the solid 50-50 ratio clutches either like I have kept addressing with no replies from the hybrid theorists.

Doug, it's the way the gene behaves; it's dominance when in it's heterozygous state that results in those 50-50 ratios. It's really that simple. When we artificially select for the pattern component of the gene, we also select for the way the gene controls which pattern is expressed.

Also, I did address your concern in a very in-depth explanation on the previous page! Dude, you're killin' me! Haha.

I've been on this message board for ten years this month and it happens with EVERY. New. Mutation. But besides this happening every time, this discussion is old hat just with tessera. I think this thread comes up twice a year, and a bunch of photos of snakes that look like kings are presented to convince me. If you want to believe it's a hybrid, that's your prerogative. I don't see the evidence. I've had 5 unrelated (well, non-clutch mates) since '09, plus those they have produced. And I've literally got 25+ years experience keeping getula kings. Admittedly, I've never tried to cross them or kept a hybrid, and 99% of the hybrids I've even seen have been on the Internet. But if these came from Jungles, then think of the scenario... someone outcrossed them to corns over and over. And then sold his only reverse trio as striped motleys on KS to Graham for a few hundred bucks. Or Graham, KJ and Don are liars. Really, there aren't many options in favor of this conspiracy theory.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Chip again

Someone give me a hand here...

Originally Posted by BloodyBaroness

That.

When someone does that, people might actually give credence to the theories. There are many morphs/patterns that look similar in certain in different species. That, in and of itself, does not mean they are related/hybrid.

Right now they are just theories and nothing more. Currently there is more evidence to them not being hybrids, than there is for them being hybrids. Could that change? Maybe. Without research, trials and evidence beyond untested look-a-likes, it certainly won't.

At this point who really gives a crap? They are pretty morph that is now mixed with a bunch of others, and the prices are at levels everyone can afford thanks to a dominant gene in a prolific species. Either you like them and breed them or you don't.

I agree, as soon as someone breeds one of those KNOWN Cal. king x corn hybrids to a Tessera, and they all come out with identical Tessera phenotypes, then it would prove something other than a snake looking intermediate between the two parent species.