Hey there! I have two young cornsnakes and just wanted to get a second opinion on their morphs. The first is Sienna, she is an amel okeetee masque. The first photo is her as a baby, and the second is her from recently. I added both because I don’t have a recent of her in good light.
My second is honey. I was told by Reddit she is a honey motley. From what I’ve seen though she seems opposite to what honeys look like online. Her siblings were very light pink with a stripe down them. Another question I have about her is what causes the lack of patterning on her head?
Those IDs seem correct to me. I think it’s also possible that Honey could be a honey motley tessera. Sometimes when you are dealing with sunkissed, motley, and tessera together, it can make it difficult to tell if tessera is indeed present. The funky head pattern on Honey is caused by the sunkissed gene.
Will you be breeding her? And where did you get her from?
Hello, and thanks for sharing your pretty corns. I’m 100% in agreement with everything Olivia said on your lovely Honey. I like the thin black tracing around her dorsal markings. It looks like she’s been stenciled.
I personally like to see thicker white borders to classify one as a Reverse Oketee, but that’s a subjective call. Others have different guidelines, which is fine. Your girl is a lovely Amel Masque in any case. The Masque is visible on her head. This gene also shows up in on the ventral pattern, causing a separation in the middle of her belly checkers. The degree of expression seen with Masque is highly variable. You can read more about it in the Morphpedia here. Masque - Corn Snake Traits - Morphpedia
Thanks again for posting!
Thank you for your response! She actually just came from a pet store and was there for a good four or more months. At the moment I have no plans to breed her, because my focus is on dogs. If I did it would not be any time soon (even if she were of size And age) but maybe in the future if I feel like I would contribute to the species. Could you help me find some info on what genes she should be mixed with? I’m just curious and want to learn more about morphs. One more question! Is it possible for a snake to be motley/stripe and tessera? I’m curious!
I’m not sure what you mean by “genes she might be mixed with”. Do you mean what hets she might have? Unfortunately, because most corn snake mutations are recessive, there’s no way to visually tell what hets they’re carrying. If you wanted to test breed her to see what other mutations she might be carrying, you could choose a male with a variety of the more common mutations, like amel, anery, diffused. If you were more interested in just getting some pretty babies, choosing a male with genes that are the same as hers would be a good pick.
As for your second question - yes! Definitely. Motley tessera, stripe tessera, and motley/stripe tesseras can all be possible. The mutation for tessera and the mutation for motley/stripe are entirely separate, so a corn can express both simultaneously. Motley and stripe, however, are allelic with each other (with motley being dominant over stripe), so a corn can be homozygous motley (two copies of the motley gene) and look visually motley; homozygous stripe (two copies of the stripe gene) and look visually stripe; or het motley, het stripe (one copy of each gene) and visually look motley. Tessera does change the look of both stripe and motley too.
Interesting thank you. I was half asleep when I sent that message and it was a bit confusing I’m sorry. By mix with I meant for the male. I’m having trouble finding bite sized articles about the morph part of corn snake breeding. There’s still a very low chance that I’d ever breed her but I love researching genetics and hey, the chance isn’t 0! I have morphs I personally prefer but I have no idea what the demand for them is so we will see how I feel after a damn ton of biological research along with potential ethical issues.
Oh I see what you’re saying! Sorry I misunderstood. Choosing a male that was heterozygous (shortened to ‘het’, meaning carrying a single copy of the gene) or homozygous for any or all of the genes she’s expressing will give you the greatest chance of producing an interesting variety of babies. So I would choose something like a caramel stripe het sunkissed. Or a sunkissed stripe het caramel. I would pick something that is not a tessera (since tessera is dominant, if she is indeed a tessera, she’ll likely produce at least some tessera babies even without a tessera male, so that’s an easy gene to test out). And ideally the male might have a few other genes in the het or homo form that you could use as a test for her. So something like a caramel stripe het sunkissed and amel, etc.
There is a genetics calculator on MorphMarket and a different one on iansvivarium.com. There’s also the morphpedia to help you learn a bit about the base mutations. And then iansvivarium.com has most of the combos that have been made if you want to look at pictures and learn with genes make up which morph.
I’m 100% in agreement with everything Olivia said on your lovely Honey. I like the thin black tracing around her dorsal markings. It looks like she’s been stenciled.
we will see how I feel after a damn ton of biological research along with potential ethical issues.