Motley & Stripe - Any chance of co-dominance?

[eryx]

Hi Guys,

I've been browsing these forums for months, but have only ever posted once or twice, but I have not seen anyone come up with this before.

I breed many corn snakes, and I'm not quite sure that anyone has a proper idea as to how to go about getting motleys.

I believe I can tell in many cases whether or not a corn snake is het for motley. Today a clutch hatched from a Creamsicle het stripe male, to a normal het amel and possible het stripe female. However, I always thought the female had stripe or motley in her, because of her pattern. Either way, I had 2 amel motleys and one normal motley from this clutch, yet no stripes.

I have a number of snakes which are het for motley, and numerous clutches have hatched this year, where I would normally sell the babies as 66% Poss Het Motley. However, looking through those clutches, I belive I could pick out the animals which are hets.

They have a slight motley pattern from behind their head, lasting maybe about 6 circles. Also, the belly is often less patterned near the front end, rather than the typical speckly pattern.

I'm also unsure about the whole stripe and motley combination. I mean, I do not believe it is possible to have a motley, het for stripe. I think if you have a motley and it carries the stripe genes, than I think it shows in that particular snake. If you bred it to another normal motley, every now and then striped will appear??

I would love to hear all thoughts on this matter, pictures of your hets would be nice to see as well.

Also, technically, if these 'hets' were visibly different, wouldn't that also make it Co-dominant? het x normal would produce 50% hets, het x het = 1/4 'super'. Again.....thoughts welcome...

Regards
Chris Jones

 

[Serpwidgets]

Also, technically, if these 'hets' were visibly different, wouldn't that also make it Co-dominant? het x normal would produce 50% hets, het x het = 1/4 'super'.

Yep, if it were possible to consistently identify hets, it would be more accurately labeled as a codominant. The "super" thing doesn't necessarily apply. Codominant doesn't mean "50/50" exactly, it just means that the phenotype of hets is somehow different from normals.

They have a slight motley pattern from behind their head, lasting maybe about 6 circles. Also, the belly is often less patterned near the front end, rather than the typical speckly pattern.

I've seen non-hets exhibit what you're describing. I thought the same thing, but it's not dependable or consistent enough to go by. IMO it is more practical and realistic to consider Motley recessive to normal for now.

I'm also unsure about the whole stripe and motley combination. I mean, I do not believe it is possible to have a motley, het for stripe. I think if you have a motley and it carries the stripe genes, than I think it shows in that particular snake. If you bred it to another normal motley, every now and then striped will appear??

Stripe and Motley act like alleles. When viewed through that prism, the results that are predicted match the results people get. (I'm sure I will get some arguments about that, but I think a lot of "striped" corns are misidentified by being called "motley" or "motley striped" corns.) Anyway, it's currently the best model we have to explain the way they behave.

 

[ecreipeoj]

I haven’t seen a co-dominance between Motley and Normal, but I am beginning to wonder about a co-dominance between Normal and Striped. Perhaps Motleys and Stripes are alleles, but I do not see the same thing with Hets for Motley and Hets for Stripes.

Since I am working with a lot of possible hets for Striped Lavender, I began to notice a common belly pattern on some of the possible hets for Stripe. Some of them had a Stripe down the middle of their bellies or at least the last half of their bellies and some did not. Just like hets for Bloods. The ones with the stripe on their bellies have turned out to be 100% het for Stripe.

I began to check all of my known hets for Stripe and 100% of them had a stripe on their bellies as well. As the 2004 hatchlings started coming, I found myself looking at all of the known hets for stripe. 100% of them had a stripe on their bellies. 100% of a lot of Hets for stripe. I began looking at the known Hets for Motley and NONE of them had the stripe. I am beginning to think that I can pick out Hets for Stripe from possible hets for Striped. The only way that would be possible is if they are co-dominant with Normals.

 

[Susan]

It's probably going to take breeders many generations to figure out the whole motley/stripe thing, if really ever. Personally, if I breed stripe X stripe, I call the offspring stripe, motley X motley = motley, motley X stripe (or if parents are "het" for the other), all the offspring are motley-stripe, no matter what they look like.
The 1st pair of this pattern group I ever owned is an anery stripe female and a normal motley "het stripe" (what he was called at purchase and before I knew they were alleles) male. Two of their first offspring looked like typical stripes, the rest looked motley (like Daddy). Upon discovering the connection between the 2 genes, I took a good look at Daddy and saw a hint of stripe influence in his pattern, the same with his motley offspring. The 2 stripes still look like 100%, but I don't call them that now. You are supposed to be able to tell the difference by the width of the stripes and their distance appart, but sometimes it isn't that easy, at least to me.
I prefer the type of motley-stripe offspring I got when I bred the same stripe female to my ghost motley. No question about their being a combination!

Attached are pics of the 2 "stripe" offspring (sorry, no recent ones) and some of the definate motley-stripes.