How pure must a corn be to be truely pure?

Reading through the Tessara hybrid theory thread and recalling back to the many ultra/ultramel hybid threads I've been wondering what a hybrid is?

My question is about % of purity and at which point does a gene, even one borrowed from a some other Pantherophis or a Lampropeltis, ever become assimilated? When does it move from "illegal immigrant" to "naturalized citizen" so to speak?

It seems a common opinion that hybridization happens to some degree in the wild, yet for the most part we still would have to call wild specimens "pure" as there really can't be a higher standard for what a "real" corn snake is other than a normal wild specimen. What percent "pure" then is a wild corn snake? If 100 years ago a random texas rat crossed paths with a seductive corn and offspring was produced, assuming the offspring survived and went on to procreate with the local "pure" corn population, and offspring continued to grow and reproduce on average every five years and at no point did any of the hybrid clutch's decedents ever mingle, you now have a animal that is only 1/500,000th texas rat and 99.9998% pure. You can't even buy gold that pure, and ivory soap doesn't even come close!

But let's say that one hybrid breeding produced a new dominant morph, lets call it "texican" (from our texas rat influence) and our 99.9998% pure clutch are 50% texican. Has texican now become an assimliated morph for pure corn snakes or would they forever be listed as hybrid animals on iansvivarium.com?

I recall almost panicking once upon a time when I heard my precious diffused golddust project (still haven't produced one) was supposedly an abomination to nature because of that nasty H word. My wonderful corn collection had been polluted with hybirds! Not only are some of my corns het for ultra, making them invisible hybirds, but by some reasoning even the homo-normal offspring of a het ultra are hybrids are they not? Or does one single gene out of millions that snakes have the single defining feature of what makes a hybrid?

I'm confused as to why ultra would be called a hybrid even if it came from the mingling of a corn and a grey rat. If I bread a corn and grey rat, the offspring wouldn't be an ultra, would it? This is something very different than say, a jungle corn (a true 50/50). I'd like to make the argument that genes like ultra and tessera, even if they did come from a hybridization, at some point have become and currently are a completely assimilated and normalized "pure" (as pure as one can get) corn snake genes. A 7th generation tessera only contains 1.5% of the origenal tessera, that's 98.5% non-maybe-it-was-a-hybrid-we-don't-know. That sounds reasonable "pure" to me, I don't think hybrid is an applicable word any longer.

Maybe instead of hybrid, we should use a new term like "borrowed". As in: Ultra is a corn snake gene possibly borrowed from grey rat snakes. Tessera is a corn snake morph possibly borrowed form striped king snakes (who may have borrowed it from someone else at some point.

This is going to be an epic thread, no offense to you.

I will pull up a chair and grab some popcorn.

Originally Posted by BloodyBaroness

This is going to be an epic thread, no offense to you.

I will pull up a chair and grab some popcorn.

Yep - could probably sell tickets. Not touching this one...

Can we just link the most recent thread by Carpet?

Hybrid, in the terms of biological speciation, is roughly defined as 2 distinct species interbreeding.

This can be further defined as intra- and interspecific hybridization. Intraspecific deals with crosses between subspecies, with the field herping community calling these crosses intergrades. Interspecific details crosses within the same genus, but between different species, e.g., ultras and sunkissed animals.

Then there is intergeneric where hybridization occurs between 2 different species from a different genus, e.g., jungle corns.

Additional fun terms found within any college evolution class, within the portion ofclass that covers genetics and speciation:

Species (can be rather tough to define)
Allopatric speciation
Sympatric speciation
Niche
Reproductive barrier(s)

Your questions are, in my opinion, on par with a semester long lecture/discussion/argument of a course called evolution. Your suggestion of re-terming/defining hybrid, would big picture encompass what "scientists" do at the taxonomic level of sinking, elevating, lumping, or clumping various species and/or subspecies. Like the sinking of the intermontane ratsnake (Pantherophis emoryi intermontana), which IIRC is genetically isolated and the elevation of great plains ratsnake out of guttata and to full species status.

As commenters have sniped...this thread could go round and round and round. I'll need some reese's pieces, twizlers, and a large Mr.Pibb for my popcorn.

I am of the opinion that all snakes are pure corn snakes except, of course, for the green mamba. I have done extensive postulating and arrived at this conclusion: the very first snake was in fact a corn snake, all other snakes (excepting the green mamba which was placed here by an alien race) are descendants of the corn snake, this, therefore, makes them all 100% pure corn snakes.

Ultra has not been definitively proven to have come from the grey rat. Tessera certainly has not been proven to have hybrid origins. That being said...

I'm not sure it would be considered sniping as much as this has already been hashed out to epic proportions with no results (just lots of arguing).

hmm, I see.
I was hoping to change the course of the conversation away somewhat from the topics already covered, mostly the ethics of cross breeding and the legitimacy of hybrids being the origin of certain morph claims. Perhaps I've missed a major part of other threads, I haven't seen much on the idea of ever classifying a trait as, like I said, borrowed.

Of course, I'm not a scientist so maybe I have no business suggesting that terms be changed, I'm curious if other terms do exists though to describe traits adopted form other species.

Did you know that according to a recent genetic study, unless you are of African decent you likely have about 11% neanderthal genetics? Possibly white skin is not of human origin :0

I don't like the term "borrowed". To borrow something implies you are going to return it. Therefore, a borrowed gene would be something we should try to "give back" or eliminate from the corn population. Tesseras are too pretty to be eliminated.

To be slightly more serious, part of the problem is that humans are trying to put everything in neat little boxes with pretty little labels, and mother nature doesn't work that way. When I was in high school, the word "species" was defined as a population of organisms that interbreed, or at least something like that. But we know that sometimes related species naturally "hybridize" in the wild. Except then, by definition, that makes them the same species, so it isn't a hybrid anymore. So, it gets really messy fast.

I believe some animal registries define what makes an animal "pure". I have a vague memory that Arabian horses can be registered as pure as long as they are no more than 1/32 of some other breed or an unknown. But at least they are all still horses.

I doubt there will be any resolution any time soon about the possibly "borrowed" morphs and whether or not a corn that has some hybridization somewhere in its background has been bred back to pure corns for enough generations to be called "pure".