???? mark here

Hello
I'll start out at the beginning
I aquired an amel corn adult from a friend last summer
I cooled here as with all of my colubrids from November to March at 50-55 degrees.
I had no axcess to a male at the time so I threw her in with my amel black rats from a GCR in florida[I knew they would breed]
she became gravid and laid 13 nice eggs.
I incubated at 81 degrees and after 2 months and 2 weeks they hatched..[I was in Wisc. at the time]
I get home expecting to get normal looking crosses and what I see is something that totally threw me off............................................... .....I had.....
3 snows
3 anny's
2 amels
and 6 normal crosses
Now keep in mind that there was no other corn around here and just a 6 foot amel male black rat

Any clues as to how this could have happened???
The male also bred his other two girls and all babies came out looking like big amel black rats withy one normal out of 23 [2 clutches]
thanx

Assuming that the animals are exactly as you describe them (I have no reason to suspect otherwise . . .just trying to be as open minded as I can about this), there seems tobe limited plausible reasons for this outcome. One would be that your male amel black rat has some snow corn parentage in its background.

Could that be where the amel gene came from??? The amel genes of black rats and corns . . .are they compatible? I really don't know, but I can't see how you could get snows out of such a breeding without that male having corn blood in him somewhere.

The only other possibility I can conceive is that the female was exposed to a corn male before you got her last year, and she stored the sperm over winter. I have never heard of a documented case of that happening, but I have heard of speculation on the subject. Can it happen? I doubt it can be held for that long, but who knows?!? It could help to explain some of the crazy things happening in the corn world recently!

Well, since 9 of the babies were not amelanistics that is certainly a puzzle. I would try to track down the genetic history of those amel black rat snakes. There are two genetic lines of amelanism in the black rats, so they (I am assuming multiple males are involved) may be a mixture of both of those genetic types. Only one of which is compatible with the Amelanism in your corn snake.

But where the Anerythrism came from could be hard to track down. I have no idea how you would ever be able to tell if some examples of the black rat snake are Anerythristic or not. But John, since you threw black rats in with a corn because of the convenience of the moment, you would have to assume that the ancestors of those black rat snakes may have been the results of the same sort of predicament.

I don't know what you plan on doing with those babies, but I certainly hope I never get any of them in my collection with the possibility of having an incompatible Amelanistic gene floating around in them from the black rat snakes. Of course, I am rather surprised that this hasn't happened already.

Rich,

What about the "hold over sperm" from one season to another (not first clutch to second clutch in the same year) theory? You've obviously hatched out more clutches than almost anyone else. Have you ever seen anything that led you to believe that this was possible, if not probable?

I thought of the hold-over thing too...but and I say but...the normals look like crosses
the normals also have some aztec pattern on the backs of two

clueless??... I am

thanx for the replies guys and I am gonna raise a few up to see what happens

Off hand I would have to say I have never seen any evidence of that, but it really isn't saying much.

How would you know? I tend to breed the same males to the same females most years, so nothing in the offspring produced would be able to be clues about this taking place.

I tend to attempt to breed every breedable sized female I have (except for the younger ones that I decide to hold off till next year), so what sort of evidence would be present that sperm retention was taking place?

In those instances where I have had breedable sized females that bred the prior year but not the current year (or no positive evidence of this taking place), I would just assume that any eggs produced happened from a current year breeding that I did not see positive evidence of.

When I started getting anomalous results from the hypo hell, that was one of the things I checked on in the records.

So as I said, my stating that I have never seen evidence of it really shouldn't carry much weight in the matter. I really wouldn't be inclined to rule it out altogether, but I would pursue other avenues first before assuming that was the case.

also
If I had amels come out of this union wouldn't that make the amel gene compatible??
they are kinda neet looking

John,

When you say that the normals look like crosses, what do the amels and snows look like? Are there any pattern variations that suggest crosses there too?

If the female did retain sperm from a previous year's breeding, that would not preclude the normals looking like crosses any way. For example:

Let's say your female is amel het anery, and she was bred to an anery het amel. From such a pairing, you would expect to get normals, amels, aneries, and snows, right? What if the amels, aneries, and snows are from corn x corn breeding of last year, and the normals are her previously unfertilized eggs from the amel black rat? I realize that it would be VERY coincidental for the black rat to have fertilized ALL Of the normals (I mean, you'd think one or two of the animals from the corn x corn breeding would be normal and look different from the crosses!), but since we're considering all possibilities, that would have to be one of them.

Female corns can and do have clutches sired by multiple males. So, if the mutants are corn x corn progeny and the "normals" are corn x amel black rat offspring, that might explain the unusual makeup of the clutch. Who knows, though??? I agree with Rich that it is more probable that the amel black rat has some corn in his ancestry.

Some pictures would be cool, though!

I will try to take some pics tonight or tomorrow when I see my brother

The pairing is as this for the babies mentioned
amel black rat x amel corn
produced thye following
2 amels
3 snows
3 anny's
6 normals

now the normals do not look like full corns as far as color goes, there is red there but not much
the others look like corn morphs, some have checkered bellies and some are spotted like in a black rat
also all this came out of 13 eggs so one egg was a twin.
They all have basically the arrow head pattern on the head to some degree

thanx again fellas