Quick Morph Question...

[Cornsnakeluver89]

I was wondering how to produce a Palmetto corn. I was also wondering how to produce a Tessera corn. Thanks!

 

[DuxorW]

Corn snakes have two copies of almost every gene. Alternative forms of a gene are referred to as alleles. A palmetto corn snake has two copies of the palmetto allele, one copy was received from each parent. Because palmetto is recessive, a snake with one palmetto allele and one "normal" aka wild type allele will look like a normal corn snake, but is termed "het palmetto" to indicate it carries one copy of the palmetto mutation. Although a het palmetto looks normal, it can pass on a palmetto allele to its offspring. A snake with two palmetto alleles will show the palmetto phenotype. Therefore, to produce a palmetto, you would have to mate a palmetto to a het palmetto (on average 1/2 the offspring would be palmetto. This is because each baby will automatically receive a palmetto allele from the palmetto parent and has a 50% chance of getting a second palmetto allele from the het parent) or mate two het palmettos (roughly 1/4 of the offspring would be palmetto because there is a 50% chance of getting a palmetto allele from each het palmetto parent and the odds of getting two copies in the same baby is thus 1/2 x 1/2=1/4. Like flipping heads twice in a row with a coin toss). A palmetto x palmetto breeding will yield all palmettos.

Tessera is dominant, meaning you only have to have once tessera allele to exhibit the tessera phenotype instead of two like with palmetto. Mating a tessera corn to a non-tessera corn will result in roughly half the offspring being tessera.