Caramel Tessera Stripe?

[Aozora]

So, the very first kiddo out of the egg of my clutch Tessera het caramel stripe x butter het stripe bloodred appears to be our target morph, a caramel Tessera stripe. It's got the nice vanishing pattern, a clear break between head and neck pattern, and in the second picture you can see there's color in between the stripes consistent with Tessera.

Also, apparently mom was hiding a surprise het amel. I was not expecting to see a bright amel Tessera in the clutch. Or the cute little amel nose peeking out of another egg.

 

[hypnoctopus]

Very cool! I have such a hard time distinguishing between stripes and tessera stripes. I thought that adding tessera to stripe would make it not have a vanishing pattern? I thought they were usually really clean, full, narrow stripes.

Surprise hets are always fun to get.

 

[Aozora]

It appears there's been some mixup between Tessera stripe and Tessera motley. The long, perfect stripe may actually be an expression of the motley gene. Tessera stripe seems to have a naturally vanishing pattern and reduced head patterning. There's a couple of really fascinating threads on here if you want to take a look.

 

[backafter30]

My research and long discussions with breeders with much more experience than I have lead me to agree with Aozora. Tessera Motley has well-defined full length dorsal stripe, tessera stripe has the fading pattern thing. Stripe by itself supposedly never goes beyond the vent onto the tail, so stripe extending onto tail is a telltale sign of tessera. Problem is, that fading pattern thing makes it really hard to tell if there's a stripe on the tail or not. I've bred a tessera caramel stripe het amel to a butter stripe female for a couple of years now, and I've still got a couple of kids that should be tessera stripes, but as they grow they fade even more, so I can't prove it. I may have to raise them in order to prove the tessera gene, but by that time, tessera morphs will have come down in price so much, it may not be worth waiting. Wait till you get "motserras" which seem to be a blend of tessera and motley, but not fully either one. It makes me wonder if there is some genetic connection there.

 

[backafter30]

Oh, and I just hatched one that looks just like yours, and I was also thinking caramel tessera stripe. Surprisingly, I also got motleys and what look like normal coloring, so apparently dad is a motley/stripe. Where normal came from is beyond me, as both parents are homozygous for caramel.

 

[HerpsOfNM]

My research and long discussions with breeders with much more experience than I have lead me to agree with Aozora. Tessera Motley has well-defined full length dorsal stripe, tessera stripe has the fading pattern thing. Stripe by itself supposedly never goes beyond the vent onto the tail, so stripe extending onto tail is a telltale sign of tessera. Problem is, that fading pattern thing makes it really hard to tell if there's a stripe on the tail or not. I've bred a tessera caramel stripe het amel to a butter stripe female for a couple of years now, and I've still got a couple of kids that should be tessera stripes, but as they grow they fade even more, so I can't prove it. I may have to raise them in order to prove the tessera gene, but by that time, tessera morphs will have come down in price so much, it may not be worth waiting. Wait till you get "motserras" which seem to be a blend of tessera and motley, but not fully either one. It makes me wonder if there is some genetic connection there.

I'm doing this right now with what appear to be a caramel stripe tessera and a stripe tessera, both from the same clutch from tessera het butter/amber stripe x butter stripe ph hypo.


Aozora...whats the tail look like. Honestly, that little one looks more stripe than tessera. I'm on my ipad right now, if i head up stairs I'll make it a point to post my mentioned striped tesseras vs the striped babies i hatched from the same clutch. Nice looking babies so far, hopefully you hit butter. In 2 clutches from my mentioned pairing, I've hit butter stripe and butter, but no butter tesseras. Hopefully this is the year for that.

 

[hypnoctopus]

Thank you guys for the info. Very interesting stuff.

 

[Giga]

Regardless of all the technical morph stuff (not that I'm knocking it, it's very interesting), that is one handsome snakey :3

 

[DLena]

Lovely baby.

 

[HerpsOfNM]

Pics as mentioned...these are all siblings from the same clutch.

"regular" stripes


CC2014-FBSCS-007-2-7-13-2014 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


CC2014-FBSCS-007-7-13-2014 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


CC2014-FBSCS-009-7-13-2014 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


CC2014-FBSNS-008-7-13-2014 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

Striped Tesseras....I'll know with certainty once I breed them. I'm not 100% sold on them being tessera though as there was at one point vanishing stripes pre-tesseras. These guys could very well be that and I've just lucked out on a grab bag of genetics other than constantly missing my target (butter tessera and butter stripe tessera) with this pairing. Again, the pairing is Tessera het butter/amber stripe X Butter Stripe ph hypo. The tessera is from SMR and the butter stripe is from Colorado Corns (now Pikes Peak Reptiles). The butter stripe ties back to SMR if I recall though.

Note that the lateral stripe, though very faint, is complete. Going off memory, neither of these 2 have the lateral stripe interrupted, though it is very faint as you move to tail end.


CC2014-FBSST-004-7-13-2014 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


CC2014-FBSCST-002-7-13-2014 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

 

[Aozora]

Another one in the clutch looks like a standard caramel stripe. I'm moving them all to their individual bins today, so I will take some more pictures for comparison. Seeing that standard caramel stripe makes me think more that the first one is a Tessera stripe. The stripe goes a lot further down on the standard, and break-up is far more gradual. There's a few extra dark scales on the suspected Tessera, but I can also see a clear yellow back stripe all the way to the tail and the faintest hints of the flanking dorsal stripes along it.

There's still one egg left to hatch, but so far I have:
1 suspected Caramel Tessera Stripe
1 Caramel Stripe
2 normals (one with a really pretty funky pattern)
1 Amel
3(!) Amel Tesseras

Dun worry, there will be lots of pictures. Mostly of my two suspects, but I know we all need our baby corn fix.

 

[DLena]

I certainly do, and these are amazing. What do they look like as adults?

 

[HerpsOfNM]

I certainly do, and these are amazing. What do they look like as adults?

Non-tessera caramel stripes seem to fade out with age. Both stripe and caramel have an ability to reduce the overall expression of the border of blotches. In addition to this, the combination seems to have a more faded look to it as you work down the tail. Really nice caramel stripes, and striped anything as a whole, will retain a nice bold pattern though. The hypo gene, to produce amber stripe, seems to cause caramel stripe to blend even more, but still a pretty snake. Albino on the other hand, creating a butter stripe, usually makes the patterning pop and be able to show the stripe virtually the entire length of the snake. Lava, in at least the photos I've seen, appears to kind of behave in between hypo and albino is drawing out the patterning in caramel stripe or caramel motley.

attached is my female butter stripe...she's the mother to the babies I previously posted in this thread.

 

[DLena]

She is a real stunner. And thanks for the easy-to-understand descriptions.

 

[Aozora]

Here's my suspected Caramel Tessera Stripe kiddo. It's gone blue for the first shed, so the pattern is darker than normal. The first two pictures are without flash, and the last picture is with flash and is a better representation of its actual colors.

You can see the Tessera dorsal markings all the way down to the very tail tip. But, in the flash picture, you can see it actually fades out quite a lot. It only looks dark because kiddo's getting ready for the very first shed.

 

[Aozora]

And here is the Caramel Stripe kiddo. The stripes are a lot finer and darker and break up very gradually, and they do fade entirely at the vent. No pattern at all on the tail.

Also bonus baby pile pic.

 

[Aozora]

One more just because babies. Mom (Tessera) has a very clean dorsal stripe, and it looks like she's carried that along to her kiddos. I think these little ones will color up nicely since she has a lovely yellow background color, and they will have a het caramel influence on their paint job.

 

[jet_set_willy]

Beautiful babies, congrats

 

[Aozora]

One egg took a lot longer to hatch. It was worth the wait, though. Our last hatchling is a Butter Tesera Hateling. I think I shall call him Chompy.

 

[DLena]

Chompy has spunk! Look at the big bad baby cornsnake! Precious.