king snake influence in tessera morph?

Sorry for all the edits to my posts, but my keyboard sucks because MY WIFE (yes dear, I'm telling on you) can't seem to keep her Pepsi off the computer desk. Okay, I'm going now...and I might get murdered...easy dear...

Originally Posted by Mitchell Mulks

Within a single clutch of bloods you get a clear belly with some lateral color bleeding into the ventral scales (you even have the translucent scales in the center of each ventral scale; which is a 100% way of identifying blood stripes from a stripe het blood x stripe het blood pairing).

"You know I noticed that myself on one or two of them this year - very off - both parents are bloods, I've never gotten anything but bloods before this year, I didn't make a mistake and mix them to different mates, so I can't explain it. I think it should be a blood, but the belly checkers are a mystery to me."
-Rich Hume

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.

Chip, don't all of us have lines that we work on? Why would someone who works with hybrids work any different? At some point we all get rid of our lines, so why would it even be far fetched that someone worked on a cal king x corn line that led to snakes looking like tessera corns, and then dumped them when they were done? That is a million times more likely than KJ and Don trying to dupe anyone! Hell, I have a line I'm three generations into with mountain kings and I'm about to be rid of them. Guess what, their heads are no longer black, they're pure white. They don't have body rings, instead they have dorsal saddles. They also don't have the normal three colors on the ventral scales, they are in fact pure white ventrals. I've done this in three short generations and they look nothing like a CA mtn king, nor do they even slightly resemble their parental stock. So why is the hypothetical situation I've proposed so crazy when I've done it myself? The only thing I won't do with mine is sell my F3's (as it's illegal), nor represent them as something other than the species they are (something that happens with too much regularity; and I'm saying for the third time now in this thread).

That picture of the leopard rat snakes... wasn't there a corn snake that had that same pattern as the one on top? But breedings of it lead to nothing??
Sorta off topic.. but at the same time.. I also think that these pattern mutations can and will be found across snakes with a common ancestry. I have heard the argument before, and I believe it, that if you can find one color or mutation in a species, you'll also be able find it in another closely related one.

Josh, I'd lump that singular event into the same category that we put paradox snakes in. It doesn't seem to be heritable and it pops up out of nowhere. Even in Rich's statement he said that this is the first one he got that looked like that even though he'd bred the same pair multiple times before. However, with tessera clutches it's common knowledge that they don't have a set ventral pattern, that in fact their ventral pattern can be anything under the sun; and all that variation can be seen in the same clutch. That's not normal, and it's consistent with only tesseras.

Originally Posted by DMong

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

I don't look at it as a stripe trait from cal kings, though I can see where the example I used was confusing since in that case it would be. IF hybridization is at the root of tesseras, I think it's due to the interaction of the pattern genes in each species. If you look at the jungle corn I posted before with the circleback pattern, you'll noticed I said it's not a motley, though it does have classic motley dorsal pattern on the majority of its body. His mother was a reverse stripe cal king and somehow that made a het motley offspring look like a motley-we just don't know how pattern-altering traits interact across species boundaries in this case.

I can't claim to have all the answers, but I know other breeders have made hybrids with tessera pattern and the tessera mode of inheritance by breeding cal kings to non-tessera corns. Beyond that, I know it was done years before the first tessera corns hit the market. That doesn't prove anything, but it sure does raise some interesting implications.

Originally Posted by DMong

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.

Last I heard, Donovan Winterburg was planning to do this.

Originally Posted by Mitchell Mulks

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?

Originally Posted by Nanci

Kevin, I would say the one snake does look like a Tessera, and the other snake does not look like a [pure] normal corn.

Sorry for the trick guys, but they're both pure corns. As often as I hear people claim they can tell hybrids from non-hybrids (and they usually do so after they already know a snake's ancestry), it always seems to be a different story when put to the test. Funny thing is, just like in this case, people seem to doubt pure corns more than they catch hybrids based on what I've seen. As much as I'd like to think I have a good eye for it, I know I'd be surprised by some if I tried to guess at a similar game, so please don't think I'm picking on anyone.

What about Steve's Cream Ts? Uber hybrid!

Originally Posted by BloodyBaroness

Someone give me a hand here...

Got him for you, Autumn.

Originally Posted by Mitchell Mulks

No, motleys are not hybrids. I think you're misunderstanding the variation Joe is talking about (variation I also agree about too). Within a single clutch of motleys you get all clear bellies (maybe a little black speckling, but no checkers...with the exception of sunkissed...but those checkers are few and far between). Within a single clutch of bloods you get a clear belly with some lateral color bleeding into the ventral scales (you even have the translucent scales in the center of each ventral scale; which is a 100% way of identifying blood stripes from a stripe het blood x stripe het blood pairing). What you don't get in those examples is what occurs in tesseras. Within a SINGLE CLUTCH you'll have siblings with clear bellies, some with checkers, some completely checkered, and some with the upper half absent of pigment only to have the lower half go to full checkers. That doesn't occur with any other corn morph! It's a marker that's indicative of two genes, both from independent evolutionary origin, that reside at the same loci on sister chromosomes. It's what happens when two genes are having compatibility issues during development; one of the genes is giving instructions for one pattern while the other is giving another. You simply don't see this WITHIN CLUTCHES with any other morph.

I beg to differ. I got that effect quite commonly in the "milk snake phase" line of Miamis I used to work with. Also got that from my Silver Queen Ghosts more times than I could ever count. And most definitely saw that VERY often in any of the outcrossed Blood Red projects I did. I would be extremely surprised if no one else has experienced this in their own breeding colonies.

Sorry, I was being facetious about the comments concerning those old line genetic traits now being determined as being hybrids based on Joe Pierce's statements. I didn't realize that it wouldn't be self evident.

Originally Posted by Carpe Serpentis

Entire clutches are not needed to show that some trait can be line bred into an animal and produce progeny that are within a certain guideline. One need only look at the many breeds of dogs that have all been selectively bred to exhibit certain traits to such an extent that these traits are given names such as poodle, zu, pomeranian, klee kai, etc. Man has been breeding hybridizing for a few years now and to think that snakes are one of those animals that for one reason or another has a strong taboo with some when it regards hybridizing is strange to me personally when so many other animals are hybridized without so much as anyone even blinking an eye in comparison. A good breeder can in fact breed any trait into his line and have it breed true after a few generations. Breeding out the unwanted genes can also be done with a rudimentary understanding of genetics and an eye for detail.

How is selective breeding in dogs any proof of hybridisation? The poodle's curly coat wasn't a trait bred into dogs via hybridisation, it was a coat mutation perpetuated by selective breeding.