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

Another thought I just had referring to all those people who have a problem with the different quality levels of bloodreds (Diffused Normal Corn). A red cornsnake showing the diffuse/episkiastic is a bloodred regardless of the amount of red.

You just have to look within your own body to realize that blood itself comes in many different levels of intensity! Personally, I have bloody noses that are a deep maroon red (probably what most associate with a bloodred cornsnake). I've had cuts when wiped with a kleenex display a very intensely bright red. I've had blood that seemed a little more yellowish/orangish looking, no doubt from excess plasma. I've tracked deer's blood trails that show a nice frothy pink blood. And if my biology teacher was correct, the blood actually running through my veins is more of a blue or dark purplish color, deeper than even the bloodred (diffuse normal corn) 'standard'.

One thing I do know for sure is that my blood has never been gray or white or amethyst or yellow . . .

D80

Taceas,

Here is what I had posted in another thread, wherein I first suggested episkiastic as a new name for the pattern morph:

"Using English letters in place of the Greek ones, the term in question is EPISKIAZO. That is the one that means 'to eclipse, overshadow, etc.' It is pronounced (epi-skee-AH-dzo), and could be used to describe the pattern mutation in a bloodred as being 'episkiastic.' "

The reason I chose that particular Greek term is because, as Rich rightly pointed out, it's not so much that saddle colors fade away on a muturing bloodred or pewter, but that the ground color seems to overwhlem the saddle coloration. Hence, the concept of the pattern being "overshadowed or eclipsed," regardless of the coloration involved (red, bloodred, lavender, yellow, silver or gray).

Darin,

Thanks for copying/pasting that! I was so cross-eyed after reading everything at once I'm sure I missed some things as I eventually started to skim posts. =P

Color vs Pattern, test #2: The "Photoshop" test...

Another test I devised goes like this:
Start with the following image which is composed of a red, green, and blue layer, and is in the shape of a generic "normal corn" pattern, and alter it to make each different trait.



The trick is that every pixel of a given layer must be altered by the same operation. The same rule applies independently to red, green, and blue. You can colorize, saturate, hue shift, brighten/contrast, pull the "RGB" sliders, etc. Thus, you are changing the color but not the pattern. This should separate the color morphs from the pattern morphs, right?

Here's Normal


Amel


Hypo


Anery/Charcoal


Caramel


and Lavender (Ok so I suck with the colors, but you get the idea.)



Now try making a Motley, Striped, Zigzag, Aztec, or "Bloodred/Diffused/Episkiastic" by using the same method.

You can't make a pewter or other "bloodred" morph because making the pattern "disappear" does it as much to the dorsal saddles as it does to the sides, which is not an accurate portrayal of bloods/pewters, etc. If the belly were included in the image, it would also require making the borders white in order to clear off the belly checkers.

It doesn't work because you have to alter the pattern to do it... these are pattern-altering morphs.

That's a good example of the limitations of photoshop. But Don't you think there are some things that just can't be explained because we don't currently have the ability to understand them?
I'll go along with the theory that Bloodred changes the pattern to some degree, but that certainly is no reason to redesignate the name of the mutations involved. Bloodred means something to me, a combination of traits that produce a certain look. Just because it has a color in the name doesn't mean I have to blank out everything because it says red. Do newbies think a snake is really blue when someone tells them it's in the blue? BLUE is BLUE so should we go through the process of relearning a new more accurate name?

Chuck,

Firstly, I assume you have read Dr. Bechtel's book Reptile and Amphibian Variants, so please review the section on Chromatophore Biology, please. Unfortunately this is the peak of breeding season around here, and I have NO time at all to go into depth on this discussion. But I think a review of the relationship between xanthophores and melanophores and their relation to pattern and color may be in order here. What exactly IS pattern? When you can accurately answer that question, maybe my opinion will make better sense.

Secondly, what exactly is the mechanism claimed for the genetic trait called "Diffuse"? How will this mechanism be distinguished from identical or similar effects seem within other unrelated genetic traits other than by saying "from Blood Red stock" as a pertinent identifier? As mentioned before, I see this same basic appearance in several other cultivars, but I certainly would not want to have the same term applied to all of them. How do we distinguish them from one another without referring to the original root stock? If you have to say "from Blood Red Stock", then what does changing the name really accomplish? That is one of the self inflicted arguments I had in dropping the name "Milk Snake Phase".

And although I do admire your efforts with Photoshop, I do not believe we know enough about the actual mechanics of color rendition based on chromatophores to be able to rely on a computer program to be much help with this. I know I tried myself with some experimentation and results were not at all satisfactory. The analog nature of the natural world is unimpressed with our digital skills, it seems.

Wish I had more time to spend on this, but my time is truly better spent doing other things at this time. Heck, I don't even have time to review what I just wrote to see if it made any sense at all!

Alright I don't understand all the genetics of it all but it sure makes for some interesting reading. I am going to bring up Leach and Hasting again. If they are called Leasting you can say to the uniformed who ask, that it is named for those who developed the strain and it does in some ways describe what happens on the belly. It would give us

Carmel Leastings
Butter Leastings
Lavender Leastings

Just one opnion that doesn't count for much but thanks for letting me give it.
Peace
Paul

Re: using Pantherophis guttata.

Noticing that almost none of the commercial sites out there are using this "new" taxon, I decided to do some inquiring. I wish I'd done this sooner to be more timely to your observation that we're not using the "new" scientific names. Rich and I explained that accurate names are essential to responsible and successful marketing. They must be accurate and acceptable. In this case, I decided to ask the expert before changing my web site. I wrote to J.T.Collins. He's the director of CNAH, the Center for North American Herpetology. I asked why their site http://www.cnah.org/nameslist.asp?id=6 was not using the latest taxa. Here is his response.

[[Dear Don:

Although I agree with the change from Elaphe to Pantherophis (and have already used it in print elsewhere), CNAH does not change its online list until 1) such a proposed shift is submitted to our snake systematist group, 2) they agree with it, and 3) we publish it in the next (sixth) print edition (when the next print edition appears, the web site automatically changes to match it).

Personally, I would go ahead and use Pantherophis. Take heart. When they finally split up the last transcontinental snake genus that occurs in the US (Coluber), we get to keep the generic name and the Old World will have to use something else.

Joseph T. Collins
The Wildlife Author Laureate of Kansas
Adjunct Herpetologist, Kansas Biological Survey
Adjunct Curator of Herpetology, Sternberg Museum of Natural History
Emeritus, University of Kansas Natural History Museum
Instructor (Herpetology), Washburn University]]

Hence, it now appears that his organization is in agreement with these changes and I will therefore now change that on my site. For reasons of accuracy and to maintain credibility in the industry, I like to do all my homework before making such important changes.

I just didn't want you to think that some of us are "resisting change" when we don't immediately react to things like taxonomic "shifts". As I indicated before, arbitrary kneejerk reactions to every new thing that comes along can sometimes put us out on a limb by ourselves. There are enough folks out there prematurely naming what they believe to be new morphs that turn out not to be. While I love to be out on that limb when I'm the only one with a new corn morph, I don't relish that position on subjects that are too contraversial or unproven.

Don
www.cornsnake.NET

Hah!

I just realized that I don't even have the latin name for the corn snake on my SerpenCo.com site! Maybe I'll just keep it that way. I think the common name of the species will change a whole lot less times than the latin name.

I'm not resisting change. But I'll be damned if I will go through my entire building and change all those ID labels from "EGG" to "PGG"!

Rich, you apparently subconsciencly omitted that little "detail" on your site for what is now clearly a good reason. Heck, they'll probably change it again in a few years anyway. Kudos.