Tessera Cornsnakes – The newest mutation and a new mode of inheritance?

Let me start with a little bit of history on this new morph. I was lucky enough to come across a couple of odd looking “striped” cornsnakes for sale a few years ago. I pointed these out to a very good friend of mine, Graham Criglow, and we immediately did what it took to put them on my breeder rack. These were actually more of a striped-motley pattern than a striped one, but we were hoping to use these animals to make “Okeetee” stripes and/or “Okeetee” motleys. Obviously, there are no true striped cornsnakes with dark or black borders (and they are extremely rare in motley corns), but these had very well defined borders. As they matured, the borders remained black, and the snakes developed into fairly good looking “striped” Okeetee corns. Our original plans were to breed them into some of our “Extreme” Okeetees (aka “Abbott’s” Okeetees) to improve the red and orange coloration while maintaining the dark lines so rare in classically striped cornsnakes.

Once we got the snakes and could verify what we saw in images (and later breed them to unrelated females), there were many obvious characteristics that differentiated them from regular striped, motley, or striped-motley cornsnakes. This led us to believe that these snakes might be a new mutation and just not a new twist on an old mutation.
1. The black lines were obvious. These are never present on striped corns and are so rare on motleys that they can almost be ignored. The new snakes are more of a “lined” corn than a striped corn!
2. Lateral patterns were heavily checkered in a mosaic-like pattern. The best way to describe the lateral pattern is that is strongly resembles digital camouflage patterns. Normal stripes and motleys have the dorsal pattern absent or modified into a partial, thin, stripe.
3. Ventral scales were usually edged in black (similar to many “het bloodred” cornsnakes but darker and more obvious) and many had partial checkers over much of the ventral surface
4. Overall coloration was that of a NORMAL cornsnake. Striped and motley cornsnakes have a hypo-like appearance. These do NOT. They retain the beautiful coloration of a normal cornsnake while having a striped-motley like pattern with intricate sides.
5. The dorsal stripe was almost always complete from head to tail, and it does not yet seem to turn into a true motley or striped pattern when outcrossed. In most cases, the “stripes” above the spine are, at most, broken in only 1 or 2 small places.

Due to these differences, we began calling these snakes the “Tessera” cornsnakes because the mosaic pattern and colors really strike us. Not only are they visually pleasing, but they can be downright shocking in appearance. For those curious about why we call them Tessera cornsnakes, “tessellate” means “to form a mosaic pattern” and “tessera” is one of the Latin roots for it.

Anyway, the above differences were obvious enough that we thought we might have something new. We sent a male to Don Soderberg (South Mountain Reptiles), and Graham and I kept the rest. Between all three of us, males were bred to 3 different (and unrelated) “Extreme” Okeetees and one normal Okeetee cornsnake het stripe. One of our females laid four good eggs, and those few babies had normal patterns. The clutch was really too small to mean anything, of course. The normal female het stripe produced a clutch of babies, and about half of them were Tessera cornsnakes. The rest had normal patterns with a couple of odd motley/stripes mixed in. Believing this was related to the striped allele, we were not surprised.

However, the other two Extreme Okeetees also produced clutches that were composed of approximately 50% normal and 50% Tessera cornsnakes! That’s right: we produced Tessera cornsnakes by breeding a Tessera to two different, unrelated, normal Okeetee cornsnakes. We feel fairly confident that these two snakes are not het for stripe or motley, so this implies that the Tessera mutation is (1) inheritable and (2) not a recessive mutation! We will confirm this next year by breeding our Tessera cornsnakes to other cornsnakes that are known to not carry the striped gene and by checking these female Okeetees to verify that they are not het stripe.

Assuming these tests turn out as expected, we don’t know yet if this is a dominant or codominant (or incompletely dominant) mutation. The only way to know this is to check for a “super” form by breeding two Tessera cornsnakes together. Regretfully, that goal was not accomplished this season, but we should have the answer by the end of 2009! This may be the first known dominant/codominant mutation in cornsnakes! It’s about time, and it has all of us here very excited!

What is exciting about the mutation is not just the intricate new pattern or the consistency of the pattern from one individual to the next, but also that the striped-type pattern has a normal coloration without the hypo-like effect of the stripe and motley mutations. In other words, we may be able to make dark colored “striped” patterns: albino Tessera cornsnakes with two WHITE stripes down the back, dark anerythristic Tessera cornsnakes with two black likes that may look like they were drawn with a sharpie, ultramel Tesseras with dual purple-tinged lines on bright orange, hypo-colored, cornsnakes, etc. The potential of this morph is almost unbelievable! It truly is a whole new branch in tree of cornsnake morphs.

Updated:
Males will be $1200/each and females will be $1000/each as long as there is no super form.

Wow, very different and visually stunning KJ, no wonder you're excited, congratulations (if that's not too premature )

Those are incredible!!!!!

You lost me at "super." I have heard this term in reference to BPs, but since I don't care much for BP genetics beyond admiring a pretty morph, I don't know what it means.

How long ago did you acquire the foundation stock, and is the original breeder still producing them?

Awesome pattern!

Finally a "garter snake" morph. That's a compliment, trust me. I love the look and am dying to see the results of next year's breedings. I have been wanting to see this pattern in a corn since I got into them, and I'm going to be excited to see where this goes!!

Originally Posted by dionythicus

Finally a "garter snake" morph.

Wow, that's the first thing I thought of when I saw the pics. I always like seeing the garter snake patterns, this is like a large garter with better colors. I think the best cornsnake colors are on normals, a new pattern makes it even better.
KJUN, do you know if the pattern will stay as striking as an adult?

Garter Snake is exactly what I thought too. It's obviously not Stripe or Motley because of those belly checkers. Do you have a photo or two of an adult?

Originally Posted by Nanci

You lost me at "super." I have heard this term in reference to BPs, but since I don't care much for BP genetics beyond admiring a pretty morph, I don't know what it means.

"Super" generally refers to the homozygous of a co-dominant mutation. Not ALL homozygous co-dominant mutations use "Super," but for some reason it's used a lot.

In Dominant mutations, the hets look like the homos (an example would be the Spider ball python)...But in Co-Dominant mutations, the hets and the homos look different from each other (an example would be the Mojave ball python).

Originally Posted by Susielea

Wow, very different and visually stunning KJ, no wonder you're excited, congratulations (if that's not too premature )

Thanks. Even if not dominant, it's still a pretty unique new look, so thanks. We are 95% sure it is dominant or codominant, but we'll confirm that next year for sure. Fingers crossed. It is about darn time we find a dominant cornsnake mutation, isn't it?

Originally Posted by Nanci

You lost me at "super." I have heard this term in reference to BPs, but since I don't care much for BP genetics beyond admiring a pretty morph, I don't know what it means.

If dominant, a homozygous and heterozygous animal will look the same. Bother would be Tessera in appearance. If codominant or incompletely dominant, then the homozygous would look different from the heterozygous. Both would look different from a homozygous normal. The "super" is what they call the homozygous form in this case. Look up "motley boa" and see the heterozygous form. Homozygous motley boas are solid black (kinda) and patternless. That's just an example. Codominant traits just means there is more variability inherent to this morph. The differences between codominant and incompletely dominant are rather minor as far as snake breeders are concerned, so it really doesn't matter THAT much if it is one or the other - both are pretty awesome. We should know the answer to this question next year. Shrug?

Originally Posted by dpreston66

Awesome pattern!

Thanks - we are rather excited. That's pretty obvious, though!

Originally Posted by dionythicus

Finally a "garter snake" morph. That's a compliment, trust me. I love the look and am dying to see the results of next year's breedings. I have been wanting to see this pattern in a corn since I got into them, and I'm going to be excited to see where this goes!!

Originally Posted by alan

Wow, that's the first thing I thought of when I saw the pics. I always like seeing the garter snake patterns, this is like a large garter with better colors. I think the best cornsnake colors are on normals, a new pattern makes it even better.
KJUN, do you know if the pattern will stay as striking as an adult?

LOL. We say they look like a "striped checkered gartersnake!" I know what you mean. As the move, the stripe DOES perform the same function that it does in a gartersnake, too...as you would expect!

Originally Posted by TripleMoonsExotic

Garter Snake is exactly what I thought too. It's obviously not Stripe or Motley because of those belly checkers. Do you have a photo or two of an adult?

Alan/TME: The adults seem to change in coloration to "classic colors" just like normal patterned corns do. The black remains, the "dark red" fades to red-orange, the background becomes a orangeish-brown......and everything else you'd expect from a morph that has been heavily bred to Okeetee Cornsnakes. NOW, the babies from this year will tell us a lot more about variation in adult forms than we already know. Until they mature, I'm a little hesitant to say that I KNOW what adults all tend to look like. We'll see. I'm biding my time on that front for a little bit longer.....lol.

Thanks KJ for making this post. You know how horrible I am about secrets and it's been killing me to talk about them. I am very excited that we have this chance to introduce such a cool new morph to the cornsnake hobby- plus to do it with two of my close friends!

LOL- I must agree with the "Gartersnake Look" comments- that was some of the first comments we all made about them after seeing the babies.

Not mush more that I could say about them- KJ did a great job at posting the history up to this point. This coming season will be really exciting!

Thanks for all the nice/supportive comments everyone- it's great to see everyone's enthusiasm.

Graham

WOW!! all I can say is wow LOL The baby you have in the first and last pic is soooooo eye catching!! It wouldnt take me long to pick up babies that looked like that. I wish you the very best next year in proving everything out. What an exciteing project!! I am not involved and I am still excited to see what happens next year LOL