Strawberry Mystery

This year's results from Strawberry Motley X Amel Motley raised some questions. The results were 4 normal motleys and 3 anery motleys. The one thing this proved is that Strawberry is not ultra and is not an allele at the same locus with amel/ultra.

When talking to Don at SMR and Jim at SWR, to see if they were aware of the anery gene in the lines, we discovered that both of them have gotten an interesting result from Strawberry X Strawberry crosses: Strawberrys and Anerys. They were not ghosts, but typical-looking anerys.

At this point I see three possibilities:

A · Strawberry's expression is masked by anerythrism. (Maybe its effect is not exactly a simple reduction of melanin.)

B · Strawberry is an allele to anerythrism, and is dominant to anery, meaning that:
an^a·an^a = Anery,
an^a·an^s = Strawberry, and
an^s·an^s = Strawberry.

C · Strawberry is a selectively-bred variation and is not inherited in simple-recessive fashion.

D · (any other ideas?)

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We're working out some breeding trials to see if we can determine what Strawberry is. Any input or information is welcome, especially if someone has outcrossed Strawberry and produced F2s to demonstrate an on/off split between strawberry and normal phenotypes.

Note: the "Strawberry" being referred to here is a specific line of corns that comes from Southwest Wisconsin Reptiles and has also been in SMR's hands. (I'm not talking about snows that have been called strawberry. )

Just curious what do these anerys look like as adults? Are these true anerys, or the "fading" Anerys? Are these "A", "B", "C", or ?, Anerys?

Whew! Another hypomelanistic gene? Aren't there enough already!! :shrugs:

Just to simplify it into common language, so that you can clarify if I understand this correctly....

A. You cannot hatch a strawberry morph if either parent donates an anery gene to the embryo.

B. If either parent donates a strawberry gene to the embryo, then you will have a reduction or lack of black in the hatchling.

and C. You increase your chances of getting strawberry hatchlings if you continue to breed the most 'strawberry-like' adult snakes.

This sounds like a very interesting project. Serp, you're asking us for suggestions...hey I wouldn't even know where to start. This scenario did come to mind tho...

What if Strawberry only could be hatched if another 1, 2, or perhaps more combinations of genes on different locus had to be present in just the right line up to overide the anery gene. When you say Strawberry x Strawberry still yielded anery offspring, then that rules out "A" doesn't it. If the offspring are anery then the parents had to have it in their genetic makeup. Why didn't they show it?

Maybe I'm way off base here, in fact right out of the ballpark and am not grasping your possibilities at all. But I would certainly be interested in hearing how these trials go. Best of luck!

Ruth

does this gene show its self in snows where the anery "suppressed".sorry,i coudn't think of a better word! i was wondering if it was anything to do with strawberry snows? if an amel and an anery both have the strawbery gene, will the amel show it, or will it only show in any snow offspring of the two?

I dont know anything about genetics, however I would love to see a picture of your strawberry motley. Sorry for the lack of help.

i was wondering if it was anything to do with strawberry snows?

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The "strawberry" snows don't enter the equation for me. There are plenty of cases where the same name has been applied to completely unrelated things, and I'm sure that strawbery snows could easily be one of those. Unless its ancestors can be actually traced back to the strawberry lines, or it has been bred to something that traces back to the strawberry lines, its genetic makeup doesn't have any meaning.

abell82 said:

Just curious what do these anerys look like as adults? Are these true anerys, or the "fading" Anerys? Are these "A", "B", "C", or ?, Anerys?

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These are Anerys. They hatch as anerys and grow up to look like anerys. The anery motleys I hatched show that the gene involved is the anery gene. (The amel's father was an anery motley from a different line.)

I believe it is possible that the "coral snow" lines (the really extreme ones like Don shows off) are actually snows from the strawberry line. This, again, will need testing to verify.

There is also amel in the strawberry lines. I have not seen one, nor heard a description of them, so I don't know if they look like any other amel, or if they are "coral snows" themselves. (Maybe coral snows are not homo anery. :shrugs: )

Here's a photo by Don Soderberg. This is an anery that he hatched by crossing Strawbery X Strawberry.

Here's a closeup of a strawberry female. She was bred to a lavender het amel (proven not het anery, hypo, or motley) and the eggs are currently incubating. She definitely appears to have reduced melanin. If I were to hatch anerys out of a pair of these Strawberries, I'd expect them to look very different from the above anery.

The other interesting thing (which Hurley has pointed out) is the lack of orange on her background... all of the color is made up of dithered red. The strawberry motleys seem to show something more like orange, but I need some good closeups to check that out.

so, if you bred strawberry X strawberry and got anery's, would you expect a co-dominant looking snake or would the anery mask it? :shrugs: i ask this because you said you'd expect the anery offspring to look different.also, do you know of any snows with this gene? :shrugs:

HanneysCorn said:

Just to simplify it into common language, so that you can clarify if I understand this correctly....

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There are two basic possibilities:

1- Strawberry is not a gene, but a selectively bred morph. If that's the case, Strawberry X Normal should create F1 normals. Some/most/many/all/none of these F1s could show various degrees of "strawberry influence." Crossing the F1 normals would create F2s that do not show any on/off expression of the strawberry appearance.

2- Strawberry is a gene, just like any other. Given the lack of strawberry-looking hatchlings in my clutch, I would say that if it's a gene, it's probably recessive to wild-type.

Two sub-possibilities then come into play if it is in fact a gene:
A- Strawberry is an independent thing and has nothing to do with hypo or anery or amel or any other genes. (It could be masked by one or more of these genes though.)

B- Strawberry is an allele at an already-known locus, such as hypo or anery. (Amel has been eliminated from the equation.)

A. You cannot hatch a strawberry morph if either parent donates an anery gene to the embryo.

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I would change that to "You cannot hatch a strawberry morph if both parents donate an anery gene to the embryo."

and C. You increase your chances of getting strawberry hatchlings if you continue to breed the most 'strawberry-like' adult snakes.

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This I have not seen. It would be true if it is a selectively-bred morph. But that question doesn't come into play until we know whether or not it's a gene.

When you say Strawberry x Strawberry still yielded anery offspring, then that rules out "A" doesn't it. If the offspring are anery then the parents had to have it in their genetic makeup. Why didn't they show it?

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Because the parents are het for anery. The key is that Strawberry X Strawberry produced strawberries AND anerys.

It is either the same as hatching stripes from motley X motley because the parents are both m^m·m^s and the resulting stripes are m^s·m^s,

or hatching amels from hypo X hypo becaue both parents are A⁺·a^a, h^h·h^h. and the resulting amels are a^a·a^a, h^h·h^h.

The breeding trials are needed to figure out which (if any) inheritance pattern it follows.

Do the strawberry corns carry any yellow like the typical anery?

Seems like the only things we really know at this point are strawberries make strawberries, anery strawberries look like anerys, and the strawberry motleys have a more even background color, but are still quite red.

We need real breeding trials. Any time I've tried to ask specifics on the line, I get "Yeah, I think I did that, thought maybe I got some of those."

Strawberry needs to be outcrossed and retrieved in the F2 to determine how much of it is an on/off simple recessive gene (vs. selection). It needs to be crossed to the various hypos (we've got a start on that), and it needs to be combo'd with the coral snows to see if there is a relation. Etc. We're really at square one right now. We don't 100% even know it's a simple recessive gene, do we?

Along that line, the coral snows from SWR need to be tested against strawberry, hypo, and anery. Who knows if they aren't just amel strawberries or what. Are they anerys?

Lots of work ahead of us on these two.

send a few this way, i'll help with the trials! :grin01:

that strawberry motley looks amazing hurley! i'll have to check out your site more often!

I spoke with Jim at SWR on the phone about the Strawberry’s when we started our Hypo Test Breeding Project. I approached the conversation in the direction that Strawberries were Ultras, since Jim had Ultra Ghost on his list the year before, but had changed them to Blue Eyed Ghost.

I became frustrated, because I could not get any clear answers about siblings and clutch make ups. He told me that the Strawberry’s came from a line, that he had gotten from a Zoo. He also produced the most awesome Coral Snows from the Strawberry line. Don S has acquired quite a few Strawberry Motleys and Coral Snows from Jim, but when I talked to Don, not long about his Corals from the Strawberry lines, he didn’t know what I was talking about which I found odd, since we had talked about them before.

There isn’t any clear answers about the Strawberry line. Here are a few photos that I have of three of them and a Coral Snow from the Strawberry line. At least, that is what I have concluded after talking to Jim, but even that seems to be in question. This are all photos that I received from Don S with permission to post them with credit.

It is very odd to see the Anery from Don’s Strawberry X Strawberry breeding. I would have expected “Blue Eyed” Ghost. . It has been a long time since I talked to Jim about the Strawberries, but he did produced Amels in the same clutches as the Strawberries, but no in-between morphs like I was trying to get him to say. I believe he has bred the amel and Anery genes into the Strawberries, but since he was very unclear on the results, it seems like there was something that he did not understand about his results. It sounds an awful lot like the beginnings of the Ultra Mystery doesn’t it?

Hurley said:

Strawberry needs to be outcrossed and retrieved in the F2 to determine how much of it is an on/off simple recessive gene (vs. selection). It needs to be crossed to the various hypos (we've got a start on that), and it needs to be combo'd with the coral snows to see if there is a relation. Etc. We're really at square one right now. We don't 100% even know it's a simple recessive gene, do we?

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Ya, exactly.

I am hoping someone out there has done something, maybe eliminate some of the crosses that will need to be done. (That was great with Ultra, all the work had been done and just needed to be compiled.)

So for everyone who's trying to keep up with what's going on...

So far we're making F1 "hets" from strawberry X lavender het amel. This will allow us to show if the non-lavenders in the F2 are all either strawberry or not strawberry. Back-crossing to mom should also show on/off. But if someone has already crossed strawberry to some unrelated line, that question could be answered sooner than 2009.

The test that would be able to eliminate it as an allele to anery is simply crossing it to an unrelated anery (ideally not carrying hypo) and see what comes out. If it's an allele to anery then "Wayne the strawberry motley het anery" shows that strawberry is dominant to anery, or is at least not recessive to it. Why? Because he would have to be genotype an^a·an^s yet he is a strawberry.

So the breeding trial would be:
Crossing an^a·an^a X an^a·an^s would produce half anery, half strawberry, zero normals.
Or
Crossing an^a·an^a X an^s·an^s would produce all strawberry, zero normals.

If normals show up, it's not an allele to anery. If we prove it IS an allele to anery, then we don't need to test it against hypo, lava, sunkissed, etc, because we already know where it resides.

If we know that it's on/off, recessive to normal, and is or is not an allele to anery, then we're off to a great start. We already know it isn't ultra.

The only things left would be crossing them to hypo, lava, and sunkissed. As usual, if someone else has done any of these crosses it could speed things up. Don has hypo covered this year, so only lava and sunkissed are left. Next year we can eliminate lava by crossing Garthina or Cassandra to Moses, and sunkissed by crossing Wayne to Zammy. (Strawberry motley sunkisseds and strawberry motley lavas? Cool! :grin01: )

Along that line, the coral snows from SWR need to be tested against strawberry, hypo, and anery. Who knows if they aren't just amel strawberries or what. Are they anerys?

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Good question. I'm still thinking about which way would be best to confirm/deny anery's presense in the corals. I'd think crossing coral snow X anery (no amel, no hypo, no strawberry) would be one thing to do. :shrugs:

that pic of the motley looks similar to a pie sided bloodred,and that coral snow is exceptional! the "normal strawberry" is very distinctive.i bet your going to have a lot of fun crossing that with different morphs! i'll definitely be following if your going to post more on this issue.

Joe, you got more out of him than I did. I couldn't get anything concrete at all when asking about the strawberries and coral snows (those wicked ones).

I've got a pair of those corals and I've got a pair of the strawberry mots and Chuck has the strawberry female that bred this year. We'll just have to start crossing.

So far we know it isn't an ultra or an ultra/amel allele. It's extremely doubtful that it is sunkissed or lava, but there's nothing to say it couldn't be an allele to them. We need a cross on hypo. Nothing to say it couldn't be a hypo allele, either.

These coral snows and strawberry mots should be breeding next season, so we'll see what we can line up for testing them out.

Whatever the outcome, the strawberry mots and the coral snows are just gorgeous with all that high pink/red color. It bears investigating.

...and yes, this:


<img src=http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=36474&stc=1 border=1>


is exactly what Wayne and Cassandra, the strawberry mots, looked like as youngens.

Don crossed the above pictured anery (strawberry) to an amber this year. I would assume that the Amber (by virtue of being a caramel) is possibly het anery.

If we assume that strawberry is a genetic trait, the cross is one of these:

(Where anery and strawberry are alleles)
Hypo Caramel X Anery = normals.
Hypo Caramel het anery X Anery = normals and anerys.

(Where strawberry is not an allele to anery or hypo)
Hypo Caramel X Anery Strawberry = normals.
Hypo Caramel het anery X Anery Strawberry = normals and anerys.

(Where strawberry is an allele to hypo)
Hypo Caramel X Anery Strawberry = hypos.
Hypo Caramel het anery X Anery Strawberry = hypos and ghosts, or hypos and anerys. (The anerys would occur if the hypo/strawberry genotype is masked by anery.)

Either way, the absence or presence of hypos should help to confirm or deny the "strawberry = hypo" hypothesis. The only outcome that would throw a wrench in the gears is if the entire clutch hatches out anerythristic. The other possible problem is if that Anery (strawberry) is het hypo. :grin01:

But if he gets all normals it makes a very strong case.