Hello all,
I have noticed something of a trend, albeit with a very small sample size, and wanted to correlate my findings with what others may be observing in their collections.
I hatched these siblings in 2018 from a pairing of Pastel Banana Mojave Het Piebald x Pewter Vanilla
Mojave Cinnamon Poss. Vanilla Female
Banana Pewter Mojave Vanilla
I no longer have the female in my collection, and had assumed her lack of pattern to be due to Het Pied phenotype, but couldn’t be entirely certain. As I also couldnt be completely certain he wasnt a Het based on appearance alone, I wanted to try to prove the male out. (Actually, I only realized Mojave was in him after breeding him). This past season I got a clutch from him bred to a Pied female. Among the offspring, no Pieds but I hatched this:
Now the sire is effectively the “best” combo that can be made in the pairing. Color-wise, this boy matches him at the same age, but again the pattern was wiped out by what I must assume to be a heavy impact on the phenotype of this particular combo with het Pied added.
I also believe by appearance, I’ve effectively proven the sire not to be a het. I also wanted to see if others have had similar experience in particular with making Cinnamon Mojaves (and combos including the two) that are Het Pied. So if you have any of this combo exhibiting this blown out pattern (or lacking it), I would love to see them!
I am well aware that Piebald is probably more accurately described as incomplete dominant with a subtle heterozygous phenotype, it just appears to become very obvious in the proper conditions.
Thanks!
9 Likes
Is it possible that the pewter was actually carrying sandblast?
Do you have photos of the pewter vanilla?
Osborne said he originally isolated his sandblast gene from what he thought was just a really neat looking pewter. There’s quite a few floating around that may possibly have the gene. I picked up a particular pewter male with the hopes of prooving him out myself.
That said…
Het pied has been known to do some funky stuff. Typically it’s the ringer or belly tracks, but with the case of cinny being in the mix, a bit of pattern distortion could still be possible.
Edit:
Found this photo of a mojave super pastel sandblast het pied produced originally by Osborne
And another that is pastel, mojave, het pied, cinny and sandblast
3 Likes
The female in this picture is chocolate cinnamon Mojave if that helps.
3 Likes
This is an interesting thought, and a possible explanation I hadn’t considered. My Vanilla Pewter female has significantly higher blushing than I expected from the combo.
1 Like
In addition, my original Pastel Banana Mojave Het Pied male exhibits a “Harlequin” phenotype he seems to sporadically throw in his offspring that I thought may explain the appearance of the original female sibling, but the phenotype of his grandson without it being present in his sire would seem to negate that idea.
1 Like
Was sidetracked by the similarities between my animals and Sandblast combos, and failed to consider there still being no explanation for the difference in phenotypes between the sire and his pattern-lacking son (unless Sandblast itself is highly variable or amped up by Het Pied).
Harlequin I honestly don’t know much about…
Sandblast seems like it can be highly variable. I’ve seen some crazy expressions and then some that almost look indistinguishable from one without the gene. But I don’t know how much of that was people trying to jump on a new gene at the time and not really knowing what they saw…
Het pied definitely is a factor because that’s how Osborne got the urban camo:
het pied, super cinny, pastel, sandblast
It’s what can help bring out more random white patterns making the animal look like a low white pied. It’s a really neat looking combo.
This is the pewter het pied I picked up. Mom was a sterling het pied and dad was a spider pied. Breeder had had a couple people think sandblast was a factor with mom but she was not sold as such. I’m hoping to see an urban camo pop up in a clutch at some point.
Sandblast is the only thing I can explain his pattern with in that pairing.
His pewter het pied brother for comparison, he still has some nice pattern but not nearly as drastic as my boy.
3 Likes
Ringers are fairly common on cinny and pewter combos.
2 Likes
Im just going to butt in and say I know nothing about what you all arw talking about.
But there’s some dang nice snakes in this thread!!
4 Likes
I could certainly see “Sandblast” as being an exaggeration of het Pied phenotype in the presence of other genes.
As far as the apparent discord between your animal and his son, genes do not operate in a strictly binary on/off manner but more along a gradient. Imagine a pair of dimmer switches hooked up to a light - if the het Pied dimmer is set to the low end and the Cinny dimmer is also set to the low end then, even though there is current flowing through it, the bulb looks like it is off because the current is not enough to cause the filament to radiate.
6 Likes
