The HISTORY of the LAVA Gene

The HISTORY of the LAVA gene.

Compare this to the History of Tessera. I would like to speak about the TRUTH today. Do you know what a False Truth is? A Politically Correct false truth?

It is not true, it is false, or a lie, depending on what adjective you want to use or are they verbs? Do you know what a Debate Class teaches you, that you haven't learned? It teaches you that someone that has the Gift of Gab, can argue a False Believe, over the truth and convince you that the false truth is the truth, and the truth is questionable.

Here is what I discovered about the Lava gene. Compare my History to I don't know nothing. If you want to be wise, you need to learn the real truth, the only truth. There really is only two choices.
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The History of the Lava Morph is fairly complete now and I thought that it would be interesting to put everything that I know about it together in one place as condensed as possible. The first Lava Mutant was hatched at my facility in 1994. It hatched from some Okeetees that I had obtained from Gordon Schuett in 1992. I obtained a group of 7.7 Okeetees from him that were reported to be from wild caught Corns in Jasper Co. SC. I ended up keeping 2.4 of them and raised them up to breeding size. I met Schuett at a Snake Show and was impressed with him, because he was very knowledgeable about genetics. Schuett was a PhD from Wyoming State at the time. He went on to become the Professor of Biology at Arizona State and is now working as the Curator of Herpetology at Zoo Atlanta.

Schuett had obtained his breeding colony that produced my Okeetees through his brother, Kyle Schuett, who was working at the Riverbanks Zoo, in Columbia, SC. Schuett’s breeders were produced by Charles “Scott” Pfaff, who was the Curator of Herpetology at the Zoo and is so today. Pfaff had a group of wild caught Okeetees that he had collected himself. There was one male Okeetee that Kyle and Scott were particularly impressed with, which was collected at the Good Hope Plantation. “He lacked most of his black pigment and was mostly orange“. Kyle and Pfaff thought he was some type of “hypo” but did not look like the Lavas that I produced. Pfaff had used this male to breed to most of the wild caught females, which were mostly from the Hunt Club, but there were some that were from the surrounding areas that were very nice Okeetee Phase wild caughts.

Gordon Schuett’s breeding colony of Okeetees were F1’s from wild caught stock. I obtained F2’s from wild caught stock, of which 1.1 were carrying the Lava Mutant gene. The ancestry of the Lava gene is known, but I can only speculate as to which Corns carried the gene. Schuett had told me that there was one male in his colony that was particularly nice and he had used him on all of his females which produced the Corns that I received. Did this male carry the Lava gene? It seems likely, but it could have been any one of the females as well. It also seems likely that the wild caught male Corn from Good Hope Plantation, that appeared to be some kind of “hypo”, was the wild caught that carried the Lava gene, but any of the females that he was bred to could have also been the carrier. It will never be known for sure, because no other Lavas were produced from this line, except for the ones that I produced. We do know that one of the breeders that Schuett had in his possession was carrying the Lavas gene, and one of the wild caught breeders that Pfaff used to produce Schuett’s breeders was carrying the Lava gene.

The ancestry of the Lava Gene is registered with the ACR in this way, but I had to speculated as to which parent was carrying the Lava gene. We do know for certain, that a wild caught Corn that was bred by Pfaff, passed the Lava gene into F1 offspring that Schuett bred. One of Schuett’s breeders was carrying the Lava gene and passed it on into 1.1 F2 Okeetees which I bred and produced the first Lava at my facility in 1994.

I had been breeding snakes for 10 years when I hatched out the first Lava. My first impression of them was that they were an Amel, but soon realized that they were a hypo. They did not look like any hypo that I had ever seen before. At this time, in my snake “career”, I was heavily into breeding Boas and Pythons. I had various colubrids, but they were not my main focus. The original Lava was raised up and bred back to its mother and approximately 50% Lavas were produced. My knowledge of genetics was pretty basic back then, but the results of this breeding were in line with all of the other recessive genes that we were working with at the time. I continued to breed the original group of Okeetees from Schuett together and back to their offspring, but I also bred the original Lava to an Amel Okeetee which proved out to be het for Snow later on.

The Ice Corns were produced by accident. I did not know that the Anery gene was in the mix until later. I ended up holding back 2.4 Hets from the Lava X Amel breeding, and 1.1 of them proved out to be het for Ice later on. When I hatched out my first Ice, I knew that they did not look like any Snow or Ghost that I had ever seen before. They were a “white” snake will blue on their heads with ruby eyes. The Amel Lavas came from this group as well. I didn’t know exactly what they were at first, but I did know that they looked a great deal different than their Amel Okeetee siblings and they resembled Albino Burmese Pythons to me when they were born, so I held onto them.

Many of you that are reading this, may start to think that there should be a lot of Lavas around by now, after 11 years of their existence, but they were almost completely lost. I went thought a divorce five years ago and almost got out of snakes all together. Prior to that, my ex-wife was "helping" me clean the snake room that the Lavas were in, and unplugged the heater that was in the room. She plugged it back into a hot outlet and most of the snakes in that room were killed. The only survivors where mostly males that were on the floor and a couple of females.

Well, I did not get out of snakes, and in fact, my interest in them was rekindled, but my main focus became the colubrids. My collection eventually became focused on the Corns due to their genetic possibilities of creating new morphs. I still had these “hypo” Corns and “White” Corns and began to produce a few again. I took some to a show in San Diego, CA and the questions began coming about what their genetic make up was. Were they a Hypo Okeetee or a Sunkissed Okeetee? At the time, I didn’t even know what a Sunkissed Okeetee was, but I soon began a crash coarse and caught up with the current known genetics of Corn Snakes.

It became clear to me, that I needed to test breed these hypo Corns that I had to the other two known hypo genes to see if they were compatible. In 2002, I bred a male Hypo Corn X Lava female that had never been bred before. The results were all Normal Phase Corns, so I knew that the Lavas were not compatible with the Hypo gene. I wanted to finish my testing and contacted Kathy Love who I had known for many years. I was able to obtain some yearling female Sunkissed from her and raised them up. In 2003, one of the Sunkissed was bred to a Lava Male and all Normal Phase Corns were produced. It was clear to me that the hypo Corns that I had in my collections for many years, were in fact a new type of Hypo and began marketing them as such.

The name of the Lava morph came from Jeff Mohr. He had obtained some of the offspring that I had sold to Tim Rainwater. They were sold to Jeff as “Translucent” Hypos. I had sold them to Rainwater as “Transparent” Hypos. As names go, they evolve until the right name was settled upon. The Ice Corns have been called Blue Ice Corns and Lilac Corns among others. Thanks to Kat, who posted a thread on this forum called “Transparent Hypo? Blue Ice?” due to an ad that I was running, the history and the name of the Lava Mutant has came full circle. I became a member of this forum in 2003 and through the contacts that I have made here and the communication that the forum has provided, the Lava Mutant gene has been established as a new independent mutant and its name has been finalized. Jeff named the hypos that he had obtained from Rainwater, Lava Corns, since he could not find anybody else that had them and Rainwater was out of the picture. They reminded Jeff of Lava Flows that he had seen in South America. Jeff obtained some of my Transparent Hypos and test bred them to his Lava Corns and they were the same mutant hypo gene. I know a good thing when I hear it and the name of Lava Corns that Jeff was using was perfect, so I very willingly changed the name from Transparent Hypo to Lava.

The only thing that was left to do, to completely establish that the Lavas were a new hypo gene was to confirm the test breedings that I did to the Hypo and Sunkissed hypo genes. Kat, Carlos, Chuck and Connie, and Don S tested the Lava with Sunkissed and Hypos and produced the same results that I did, Normals. The Lavas were the third hypo gene that has been proven to be genetically in-compatible with the two previous known hypos. It has also been used to test out some of the other “new” hypo genes. It has been tested to Christmas, Strawberry, and Ultramel and Normals were produced in all cases. Today it has been established. That we have five independent hypo genes, Hypo (Hypo A), Sunkissed (Hypo B), Lava (Hypo C), Ultra, (Hypo D) and Christmas (Hypo E). It was also established last year, thanks to a thread started by Kat again, called the “Ultra Mystery“, that the Ultra gene is located at the same locus as the Amel gene and they are alleles. When combined they produce a sixth type of hypo known as Ultramels.

Well, there you have it, the history of the Lava gene as I know it. If you have time, I would recommend reading through the two above mentioned threads which has a lot of information in them. They really show the power this forum can have by bring us all together. It allows us to communicate and debate ideas and come to logical conclusions and new discoveries.

Below are some photos of two of the offspring from my original group of Corns that produced the Lava gene. They are female F3’s that are het for Lava. The entire group looked very similar to them. They were on the red side and the border areas were not particularly big, but very black. They also had some black frosting. So far, all of the out crossed offspring from this line, have been very red

I would like to encourage anybody that has Lavas or Lava Combos to post photos of them here to help establish a visual record of their phenotype. I will also post photos of them from time to time.

Here is an offspring from this line. Go to the ACR and follow his lineage all the way back to their lineages of capture. We only recorded what we knew for sure, and then as we learned more, we applied simple Corn Snake Genetics to the gene. This is why, I like Landrace over Mutant Corns, but do you see me not playing with them like Steve R?

You can not compare our Corns produced from our Mutant Corn Snake gene pool to wild caught Corns except to say, that the Wild Caught Corns are the standard for the purity of the line. I don't know nothing, does not compute to the truth.

RedCoat Landrace Okeetee het Lava ACR8422
http://herpregistry.com/acr/registry.php?idnum=8422

Are we older than 5 years old? I believe there are several North American Colubrids that have been placed in Species, and Sub-Species. We have for example the California King Snakes and a Corn Snake Caught on the East Coast, like let us say, The Hunt Club. Did anybody get a good grasp of the Genetics of Colubrids before Mutant Genes were discovered?

Did you ever learn the Scientific names of california, guttata, pueblan, zonata, greeri, Pituophis, do you know what these supspecies/species are without knowing the Common Name? Our Colubrids were given scientific names by the Scientific Community, or Herpetologist.

This gave us a working knownledge of the different species and a common sense way to speak about them, in Snake Jargon. Did they use DNA Test? Are DNA test needed or available? If not, any time someone speaks the words, “We will never know without DNA test?”, is propagandizing you into believing a false truth. The truth is DNA test are not available, so therefore; not a logical argument for the true. This statement must make you believe that there is know way to tell the difference between a California King Snake and an Okeetee Corn. This is a false truth. It is the opposite of the truth.

Clever Political Truth Speakers use opposites to argue points that are not even possible, to convince you that their False Truth is what you need to believe if you are to be their friend. The Truth stands above this kind of false logic.

Compare this Truth, to the I don’t know nothing at all about Tesseras History at all, but we can not tell if they are not true Corn Snakes without DNA Testing. This is not possible, and YES WE CAN!

Do you know KJ. Have you read his write up about me in the BIO? Have you ever read my response on The Source/ KJ had ever email we ever sent back and forth and photos and knew everything about the purchase.

He bought Het Hypo Plasmas from a male I had, that everybody liked. We thought it was a Hypo Plasma. Isn’t there a couple of undescribed hypo gene floating around in Hypo Plasmas and Crimsons and on and on. He got every thing he wanted, except they were not ALL het for Hypo, but some other hypo gene.

Now compare the History of Tessera from KJ to that. He doesn’t know the name of the person he bought them from. It was a nobody. He bought them on KS, does anybody remember. This seller had an account. Emails were sent back and forth. Were they shipped or picked up. What did the seller tell you about them. They are from a “Motley x Striped breeding”. Do Tesseras look like Motleys? Is the persons name they were purchased from the same nobody that claims he produced Lavenders before Rich Z?

KJ purposely kept every thing that could have been know about the lineage of his purchase from me, but this time he can’t remember a single thing about Tessera.

"They look like Pure Corn Snakes." No they don’t! I can teach a 5 year old the difference between a Normal Corn from any line, and a Non-Tessera Normal.

Corn Snakes are basically printed on parchment paper, to begin an analist. If you print this same Corn Snake Pattern on glossy white paper, from a California King, it changes their appearance forever. Once you can recognize them, you can pick 10 of them out of a bucket of 100 normal Corns going to a Whole Saler as easy as if they were Super Corns, or Amels.

Lava Super Corns look like Corn Candy. Three colors printed on glossy white. Lava Tessera compared to a Lava Motley, looks so different, they are obviously very different. One is a Super Lava Tessera and the other is a Lava Motley.

This “Improvement” is ignored, or no logical reason is given for it, just Lava could have came from a Captive release. What, cool aid are you offering me to drink? Can’t you tell, the difference between a false truth and the TRUTH?

Do statements like, I released 1000’s of Captive Bred Corns near the Hunt Club, so anything they catch there could be from a captive release. Don’t get hooked on Locality or “Landrace” Corns. They could come from Captive releases, they are no more pure than our Mutant Corns.

They left out one simple word., they are no more pure than our Hybrid Mutant Corns, because they could be from a Captive Release. How about taking last year’s Okeetee Phase Corns from Mutant Stock to the Club during peak collecting season.

You go to the motels where they are staying and ask where they are from and if they caught any Hunt Club Okeetees. Somebody might be from Texas and not caught anything in three days. You say, boy I got lucky, I came across one crossing the road here. Excitement explodes, let me see, let me see! You show him one of your yearly Okeetee Phase Mutant Corns and tell him it is wild caught.

You end up selling him this $50, if you are lucky Okeetee Phase Corn as a Hunt Club Okeetee, for $200. "See, Locality Collectors don’t know the difference between Mutant Okeetee Phase Corns and Hunt Club Okeetees. This proves they are no better than our Hybrid Mutant Okeetee Phase Corns. Join my side, and by my Mutant Corns."

Hey, I did good, this is totally hypothetical, but has been presented as an argument for the purity of the Mutant Corn Snake Gene Pool.

This is the approach of the Political Correct False Truth Educators of the genes of our Corns. They believe if you know the truth, it will devalue their product. Is the Mutant Corn gene pool as pure as wild caught Corns, Are you 5 years old? Do I need to give you the answer to this question?

The standard, is wild caught localities. Are we going to say that the Goldens, are just a captive released Caramel, if I prove they are compatible to Caramel, OR are we going to say, COOL, the Caramel or an Allele to Caramel was discovered in a wild caught Locality Specific line?

When we know the Name of the person who caught the snake, the date and location of the capture and are shown photos from the beginning before any breeding was done, except to wild caughts from the same Locality, we have the truth as they know it from the beginning.

Compare this to I don’t know one thing about them, except we will never know unless we DNA test them. Why are Non- Tessera offspring improved? There is a logical reason for it.

If you can’t tell me who you bought them from, what Corn Snake Line they came from, or anything about them, what proof are you offering that they are pure Corn Snake, besides, nothing? You can write a three page response about nothing related to the subject except, false truths and ignoring that an “Improvement”, happens in both Tess and Non-Tess offspring in F1. What causes the varying belly patterns on Tesssera? Is this normal Corn Genetics, even when the same thing happens to Non-Tessera ventrals? If you can’t produce Normals from Tessera, can you not see they are Super Tesseras, and Super Corns?

They look more like them than a Corn Snake, but bred for generations to Corns to make them 97.5% Corn Snake Genetics. DNA testing is not possible or needed, if you use Common Sense and just learn when you are being lie to, or just don’t believe everything you are told, because of their reputation.

Instead, why don't you listen to some common sense articulated, logical sense, instead of something that makes no sense at all.

Some Reputations are False, and some are Truth. Don’t you need to hear both sides of the story first, before you decide what is true and what is false?

Don’t you need more than I don’t know anything?

Its a RedCoat from another line. Nobody would buy it, so here it is. I can tell you how I produced it.

Tessera het Silverqueen x Striped Lavender het Hypo

RC Tessera het Striped Hypo Lavender x Striped het Hypo Lavender

Did you see the Tessera Hypo Plasma, I posted? This is the line it came from.

This RC "Normal" Corn was bred back to a Striped Lavender and a Striped het Hypo Plasma, two more generations of Mutant Genes.

Does anything about this Corn say Super RC het Striped to you?

Compare it to the RC Landrace Okeetee het Lava male. Do you see any difference? Does one look different than the other. Which one looks more like a Hybrid?

This is the only example I am going to use, mainly because he it the only one I have at the moment. A bunch more are coming this year. His ventrals are not really that bad, compared to some. Just look at Tesseras possible ventrals, and put them on Non-Tess Normals, Amels, Anerys, Ghost, Lavas, Bloodred and on and on, and you will have the possiblities.

My Wholesaler, really likes me these days. He gets all of them, and they look improved over our other Mutant Combines. He likes Tesseras too. What do you want me to do with all of the Tesseras het for this and that that I produce?

Do you really hate the Aztec Patterns of most Tesseras from Mutant Stock? Why do you only like a Tessera Okeetee, with a nice stripe down the back?

I produced both phenotypes of Tesseras, and there are genetic reasons for the Aztec patterns. Border-less, opposite of an Okeetee, causes most Aztec Patterns like on the Tessera Hypo Lavender I produced. Are they low quality? They are not Tessera Okeetees. How about the Tessera Masque?

Is this why Sunkissed Tesseras don't sell? Don't we like Shatter Corns and Striped Sunkissed? Sunkissed just can do that.

My Landrace Sunkissed Okeetees are going to be boring as far as pattern goes. The blotches are not as irregular as most other Sunkissed. Most of my Lava Sunkissed have fairly normal Okeetee Patterns.

My Kathy Love Landrace Sunkissed have checkered belly patterns. If your Sunkissed came from the Mutant Corn Gene Pool, then I don't know why there belly patterns are messed up, except that.

You can not compare apples to oranges, you can compare this RC Borderless het Striped to the RC Landrace Okeetee het Lava. Please explain the differences, or Markers away. I will start, Border-less.

The "Improvement" can easily be seen with hatchlings. I don't know if this RC Border-less het Striped ph Anery Lavender is an improvement to anything, and I call them Super Corns.

All of the Non-Tess siblings, such as Normals, Anerys, Amels, Hypos, Ghost, Sunkissed, Lavas, Bloodreds, Lavenders and on, are mixed in with other genes from the Corn Snake Gene Pool, and sold to a wholesaler, with no known hets.

I don't keep them to mix their genes into my colony again. I keep a lot of Tesseras, but you can tell them apart, and I keep ACR records.

Today, there are apples and orange Lavas, or Lavas and Super Lavas. A bunch of them, where are they going and mixing up the gene pool. I think out of this country, but I don't ask.

In each and every bucket you look into, while packing, you can pick out the Super Corns easily from any gene.

Why can I see this and others not? My Wholesaler sees it, and doesn't care at all, he prefers them. I am not sure he knows why some are Improved over others, except for the Tesseras het gets, but he can tell.