Hello, I was looking at getting one of my hatchling ball pythons genetically tested for the clown gene. It is a banana super lesser (BEL), so obviously I can’t really tell just by looking at it. It is an offspring to a het-to-het pairing, so it could be a visual, het, or nothing at all. My question is, does anyone know if the genetic testing differentiates between just being het for clown and being a visual for clown? The description just kind of talks about testing for the clown gene. I’m more curious if its actually a full on visual. Thanks for any feedback.
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It should be able to differentiate between a het clown and a visual clown
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Have you tried using a black light? BEL clowns usually show easily with a good UV light.
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I’ve tried with 2 different wavelength blacklights, and honestly, can hardly see any pattern, not enough to be definitive. I’m wondering if the banana that’s in there too makes it harder with the blacklight trick?
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Banana should not impair the black light trick. Do you see a dorsal stripe when you hit it with UV?
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And @chesterhf is correct, the test will be able to differentiate visual from het from non-carrier
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I’m going to try the blacklight thing again, maybe after a fresh shed and see, but I’ll most likely do the genetic testing anyway just to be sure. Thank you for the replies.
ProHerper, which seems to be a similar snake genetics lab out of Europe, says that their tests can differentiate between hets and visuals, so I don’t know why the USA counterpart cannot do the same.
Per the ProHerper website:
Albino test: This test checks if your animal is heterozygous (100% het) for any of the following alleles: Albino, Candy or Toffee. The test can also differentiate between visual animals: Candy, Candino, Toffino, Toffee or Albino.
Lavender albino test: This test checks if your animal is heterozygous (100% het) Lavender Albino or if it is a visual Lavender albino.
Ultramel test: This test checks if your animal is heterozygous (100% het) for any of the following alleles: Ultramel or Caramel Albino or if it is a visual Ultramel or Caramel albino.
Piebald test: This test checks if your animal is heterozygous (100% het) Piebald or visual Piebald.
Regards,
Chris
Ok, thank you. The wording on the site just didn’t really let you know if it differentiates between het or visual, just kind of said test for the gene. So thank you for the info.
Hopefully not to distract from the subject of this thread (I’ve not yet had a homozygous animal tested so can’t confirm the US testing reports that but strongly suspect it does) but what exactly is meant by “caramel albino” here? I keep seeing conflicting reports as to if ultramel and caramel albino are alleles and it has me wondering if there might be 2 different mutations sometimes called caramel albino? The mutation that was called caramel albino 20 years ago has a side effect of a tendency to kink (particularly near tail) and as far as I know the females don’t produce good eggs. I think it’s almost extinct but I have twins that are 50% hets so wondering if there is actually a test for that gene or if the name is now being used for something different.
Caramel Albino is seen as its own morph separate from Ultramel. The reason people are speculating that it might be allelic with Ultramel is because of testing done by the Ball Python Genetics Project, they found 2 different mutations for the Ultramel morph so they speculated that one of the mutations is from Ultramel and the other is from Caramel Albino. They have no actual proof though, since hardly anyone works with Caramel anymore due to their issues with kinking and infertility. So, some people say that the morphs are allelic, and others say that some breeders might have been selling Caramels as Ultramels once they fell out of favor in the ball python community. Someone correct me if new information has come up about this, but this is what I know about it.
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This goes back to the “Crider Caramel”
Ryan sums it up really well here so I am not going to repeat the whole thing:
I had told Hannah about this, guess I was not clear about it though
So it’s the testers misidentifying one of the ultramel alleles as “caramel albino” and the real caramel albino is actually proven NOT to be compatible with ultramel or Crider? I forgot, I actually have a third sister 50% chance het caramel albino so between her and the identical twins two shots I still have that old problematic gene. I’ll try to get those sheds sent in although not as helpful as a for sure het or homozygous caramel albino for straightening this out. A shame about the issues as I think it was a much prettier mutation than ultramel.
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It wasn’t misidentified, it just hasn’t been proven to be Caramel since they don’t have any Caramel DNA to compare to the Ultramels. It’s still possible for the other gene to be Caramel, they just don’t know for sure. I have heard that Caramel is Allelic with Ultramel, however not many people try the pairing for a few reasons, one being the potential to make kinked or infertile babies and another is just because of how scarce Caramels are due to the issues with them. Het Caramel females don’t have the same issues as the visuals, so as long as you don’t breed them to another Caramel or het Caramel then you should be fine even if they do turn out to be het for it.
I just checked and there are more caramel albinos for sale than I would have thought including a few females, one of which has a kink so thinking it’s the real deal.
If I remember right after years and years starting with a possible het male I produced 2.1 caramel albinos after the news had broken about (first the kinks then eventually the issues with eggs). I think only one of the males had a curly tail so I was pretty lucky. I sold the female cheap to a guy who didn’t believe the issues I disclosed in my ad. Dang they were pretty to look at though.
I always held out hope there might be some way to compensate like an extra dose of some nutrient in the rodent feed of breeding females (both hets and homozygous). Maybe if Dr Seidel can confirm the mutation for caramel albino something about it’s location or nature could point to a treatment to prevent the problems.
I believe it is that they have found two alleles, like the did with Albino and YB, but the naming confusion and the weird sort of collective amnesia the ball side of the industry has for things had them thinking that one caused the Ultramel phenotype and the other caused the Caramel phenotype
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I can guarantee that Caramel is absolutely NOT allelic to Ultramel. The two morphs have been paired together on numerous occasions and ended up generating doiuble hets. Further, the double hets have been bred together numerous times to produce a double visual
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Thanks for the heads up on that, I had been wondering about how true that was for a while.
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