Question about morph

I am new to this site and to snakes. I have been looking around, trying to determine the morph of my corn, Seth. While I don't have a picture ready to load, he looks alot like the Miami Phase corn. I have not been able to see the belly of any of these snakes, but Seth's belly is white with some black.

Any ideas?

Miami Phase corns are a variant of the normal corn, so their belly pattern will be white with black checks. If Seth appears to look like a Miami Phase, then he probably is, but if you're not comfortable calling him/her that, then calling Seth a normal will be perfectly acceptable and no one can argue that. Can't wait to see a pic, I like Miami's alot but don't own one myself, yet.

of her

shot

I'm not an expert on Miami Phase corns. In the full body pic, most of her body looks like a Miami...gray background, but it seems she may have a little too much color in her background on her neck in the first pic. But as I said, I'm not an expert on this morph, and have no idea what would be considered a "cut-off" coloration between Miami and normal. She's very pretty either way!

I guess perhaps the term 'morph' needs to be defined.

The term has always seemed too nebulous for my tastes, which is why I began using the term 'cultivar'. This is short for 'cultivated variety'. Meaning a variance from the normal look that has been cultivated to propagate more and better looking examples of the offshoot varieties.

I first heard this term applied to bamboo, which is one of my other weaknesses, and felt the name was fitting for what we are doing with our animals.

But back to the topic, depending on how you define, 'morph', unless you would define a normal colored corn snake as being a 'morph', I would not classify this one as anything but a normal corn snake. It does seem to favor the Miami Phase look, but unless I knew for certain that some of it's ancestors actually came from the Miami area, I would not feel comfortable calling it that.

Personally, if I had it to do all over again, I would not have chosen a name like 'Miami Phase' that favored a particular locality. Not when similar looking animals can be found in disjunct populations all throughout the corn snake's range. But certainly that is one mistake that will be extremely difficult to correct at this late date.

I have seen alot of pictures of normals, and miami phase, I agree that it resembles both. I will consider it a normal.

From my understanding, this animal was bred here in the Ozarks. I have looked on the web and so far have not found any breeders that are 'web-enabled' in this area.

Thanks for looking and clarifying!
Tiffany

I know Miami Phase is a type of normal corn, but is locality specific. This trait for the grey ground color, I would think, could show up anywhere in nature. Or am I just way off on my genetics? (I am a math person, but never really got into applying it to genetics, so I might be grasping).

If that is the case, I would also think that normal is very broad term, from the very dark normals I have seen around the web to something like Seth on to the miami, and everything in between.

There sure are alot of beautiful normal corns!
Tiffany

Oh, no doubt about it!

There is a tremendous amount of variation even in what we refer to as a 'normal' corn. And this is one of the reasons you will see names applied to some of these variations in an effort to relate to someone what form they are talking about. Then carry this through into each and every genetic variant we are talking about. Then extapolate that into combination genes.

So now we have identifying labels to determine different variants of Amelanistics. Many variations of Snows are also sporting their own labels, as are a few Ghost variations. That will go even further. MUCH FURTHER! For instance I can see quite a bit of variation in the Silver Queen Ghosts. So what will happen as I begin to selectively breed for those offshoot traits?

Studying the genetics of color/pattern expression in the corn snake is much like the study of fractals (since you are a math person). No matter how closely you zoom in to look at the picture, the complexity does not get any less. I believe this is going to be the same circumstance we are facing trying to figure out the genetics of the corn snake.

I know this is off subject - but at one time, I wanted to write a computer program using fractals.

Ho Hum ... haven't done it yet, still programming, but at the moment, programming for Corporate America.

I have seen a 'Corn Snake Genetics Calculator' program, where you enter in the morphs ( or lack there of ) and it will output the 'odds' for the offspring.

I have tried to find it, but don't seem to ever be at the right Web page.

I wonder how accurate it is?