Hi! New to forums here—I have a ~2-3 year old female corn that was sold to us as a bloodred; she definitely has all the markings of a high-expression diffused although I’m not sure if there are any masque or red factor genes at work here. My question is, every example I’ve seen of bloodreds has a white belly or at least a white central stripe running down the belly, with some orange encroaching on the sides. However, mine has a nearly solid orange belly with only some darker flecks, some white flecks on her neck approaching her head, a white chin, otherwise solid orange with no checkers whatsoever. I’m a bit new to corn snake genetics so wondering if anyone knows what gene(s) cause this? Is this just a result of the diffused gene at work or could it be masque or red factor or something else?
Welcome to the community! She’s a very pretty snake. It’s pretty common for Diffused corns to have a lot of color “bleed” on their bellies, called suffusion. (This is different from the diffusion, which is the blurring of the lateral and dorsal pattern.) I don’t know that anyone has parsed out exactly why. Red Factor does cause increased red. Masque has a bit of a brightening, hypo-like effect. Yours has enough red saturation and suffusion that I assume there is some red-enhancing gene present.
It’s not exclusively a Bloodred thing. Other morphs have suffusion in varying degrees as well. I’ve seen it in normally patterned wild corns as well as various captive bred morphs.
Thanks for the helpful info as always Caryl! Looking forward to getting your snake as well ^^
You’re welcome. And thank you!