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Question on "Combos", Serp, Rich...

M

Mare

mIdDlE aGeD mEmBeR!
I am really curious about the so called "combo" morphs. Amber, being from Caramel to Hypo and Butter being from Caramel to Amel...

Is this something that shoes up in the F1 generation or is the combo morph the result of breeding 2 F1's together?

Jeez, I read and read and get more and more confused!:eek:
 
Yes its a combonation of the 2 F1 generation being matched together... there are few morphs that come from breeding and getting the morph :confused: Example the Stripe/Motley... if you breed a Stripe to a Motley you would get Stripe/Motleys in the first clutch...
All of the other Morphs come from selective breeding, like breeding a Anery A to a Amel, the babies would all come out Normal Het for Anery and Amel (Snow)... after you breed your F1 generation then you would get a ratio of:

1/4 being both Anery and Amel (Snows) This would be the Combo morph that you are talking about...

Hope I helped...
 
I thought the "stripe" variant of "motley" was selectively bred?

From what I read, they're both motley, but stripe is a selectively bred (or very luckily bred, heh) extreme form of it. Like candy cane is a selectively bred form of amel. Or am I wrong about both of those? :)
 
The Stripe/Motley as I understand is... If you breed a Stripe to a Motley then the genes combine and you get offspring which ressemble both the Motley and the Stripe morphs in the siblings... when you see a Stripe/Motley, the genotype is actually not dominate but recessive...

meaning if you represent the SS for being stripe and Ss for being het stripe, visaversa for the Motley... if you bred a SS to a MM you USUALLY would make offspring which would have a genetype like: SsMm... if the Stripe and Motley patterns where like the normal mutations, then the babies would look normal... BUT THE STRIPE/MOTLEY isnt like the other mutations... When both the Stripe and Motley mutations are recessive in a individual then the phenotype (the way they look) is affected and the speciman looks like a combonation of Stripe and Motley, but it looks like a mixture of both...

I hope that made sense... Oh and Im not saying that any of this information is absolutly correct this is just info I picked up on this forum... I am not sure if any or some of the info is right... I would like to hear from Serpwidgets just to make sure what Ive learned is correct... I DONT WANT TO GIVE WRONG INFORMATION :)
 
Well, I'm not Serp, and I don't play him on TV, but I'll see if I can't help clear this up a bit. JR is basically correct in everything he said (assuming I read it all correctly! !) )

The Motley and the stripe genes are both simple recessive genes that are found at the same location (locus) along the DNA strand. Let's say that NN the normal genes that control pattern appearance in cornsnakes, ss represents stripe and mm represents motley. Now, NN, Ns, and Nm snakes are all normal looking, but the Ns snake is het for stripe and the Nm snake is het for motley. Now, the ss snake is homozygous for stripe, and the mm snake is homozygous for motley. Both of these latter two animals will show their particular mutations (stripe and motley respectively), because neither of them have the normal, dominant gene at that locus.

The trick to stripe and motley, though, as was stated above, is that both of these recessive genes occur at the same locus. Now, each locus can ONLY have two genes represented there. So, a snake that is the product of a stripe x motley breeding will have at the pattern locus an s (the striped parent could only give that gene because he had to be an ss snake in order to show the stripes) and an m (the motley parent could likewise ONLY provide an m, because motley is mm at the pattern locus of the DNA chain). So, this snake, which is an sm animal, is technically het for BOTH stripe and motley, but because these genes are both at the same locus, there is no room for a normal gene, and the animal is a stripe/motley, showing characteristics of both pattern mutations.

So, while stripe and motley are BOTH recessive to the normal gene, they are equally codominant to each other. An sm snake bred to another sm will produce 25% stripes, 25% motlies, and 50% stripe/motlies. An sm snake bred to a stripe (or motley) will produce 50% stripes (or motlies) and 50% stripe/motlies.

Hope this helps clear things up a bit. I would STRONGLY encourage anyone wanting to learn more about what the genetics ramifications are from breedings, or just to learn more about the terms we use in this arena, to go to Serp's website. It is VERY informative.
 
Hmm... a good illustration I've come up with uses cards instead of letters:

Grab a deck of cards... or two.

Ok, you know that there's an amel gene and the normal counterpart. Let's say the amel "slot" is the Aces. The Ace of Spades is the dominant and the Ace of Diamonds is the Recessive "amel" gene.

You already know that all cornsnakes have a pair of Aces, but they can be either two Spades, a Spade and a Diamond, or it can be two Diamonds, which is the one that will express amelanism.

Note that the aces always sort into the "Ace" slot. You don't get an Ace paired with a Ten or anything else.

Ok, so now you have the same deal with Anery, except it's the Queens. The Queen of Spades being the dominant and the Queen of Diamonds being the recessive Anery gene.

So, if you have a cornsnake that has two Aces of Diamonds and two Queens of Diamonds, it is a snow corn.

Ok, now let's go to Motley. We'll use the Sevens. The Spade is the Dominant, and any corn with a Seven of Spades will have a normal pattern. The Motley gene is the Diamond, and if a corn has two Sevens of diamonds it will be Motley with the plain belly and all.

Now here's the trick:

...

The Striped gene is the Seven of Hearts! :eek:

So, what do you think happens when you cross a corn that is (Two Sevens of Hearts) Striped, with a corn that is (Two Sevens of Diamonds) Motley?

That's right, you get a Seven of Hearts and a Seven of Diamonds. So guess what, there's no dominant "normal" Seven of Spades there to force belly checkering and take total control of the dorsal patterning, so the other two genes do their things. :)

And as long as we're here, here is how all of the common terminology relates to the cards:

"Genotype" describes the pair of cards of the same value, like Aces, Queens, Sevens, etc.
  • If the two Aces are the same, the animal is homozygous for Aces.
  • If the two Aces are different, the animal is heterozygous for both Aces.

"Alleles" are ANY cards of the same value. ALL Aces are alleles to all other Aces, because they go in the same slot. Spades, Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs, Green, Blue, Purple... whatever suit it is, if it's an Ace, it's an allele to all other Aces because they all go in the same slot.

Dominant, Recessive, and Codominant all refer specifically to the relative relationships of two alleles. It's like "greater than, less than, equal" with numbers.
  • The Amel allele is recessive to the wild-type (Normal) allele, which is dominant to the amel mutant allele. Or Wild-Type > Amel.
  • The Motley allele is recessive to the wild-type allele, and is co-dominant to the Striped allele.
  • The Striped and Motley genes are recessive to the wild-type allele, but codominant to each other. Meaning:
    Wild-type > Motley
    Wilt-type > Striped
    Motley = Striped

A cornsnake cannot be "dominant for amel" or "recessive for amel." Those terms do not describe genotypes or phenotypes, they describe the specific relationships between alleles. :)

So, if a Corn has a Seven of Hearts and a Seven of Diamonds, how do you describe its genotype?
 
As a response to the original post, sometimes parts of the bloodred trait will show up in the F1s. How much of it shows will vary in a clutch.

OTOH you can get non-normal morphs in the F1 from breeding two double morphs together that have one gene in common. Say you wanted a ghost motleys in the F2s... breed a ghost and an anery motley, and the F1s will be anerys dh for ghost motley.

Of course, if a trait has no double morphs available, you're pretty much stuck making normals in the F1s (save for the striped and motley as noted above). Or, if you're limited in budget and can't afford to buy all the morphs you want... :) Or if the morph in question is near-impossible to get (hypo bloodred springs to mind)...
 
Wow!

Thanks to all of you... Darin, Kat, JR, Axe... didn't mean to leave anyone off the list so thanks for responding even though I only said Serp and Rich in the header!!!!!!!!!!!

As Homer says "D'OH!"

Now, more reading....:p
 
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