Questions about, Fire's and Russo's

[ajeff]

I don't suspect that these are the same thing but what I am curious about is, are these co-dom traits? I always had the idea that leucism would be simple recessive like albino or clown.

Fires produce a visable "het" and I am not sure about Russo's... I thought I read someplace that some one bred either a Mojave or lesser to a russo ball and produced a blue eyed so, if thats the case, that makes leucism a co-dom trait, at least in ball pythons, or have I completely missed something here?

[RandyRemington]

There appears to be two separate and incompatible leucistic complexes in ball pythons and both are co-dominant.

The black eyed leucistic isn't much of a complex so far but consists of the black eye leucistic being the homozygous form and the fire being the heterozygous form. There are potentially a couple more versions which as far as I know haven't been tested for compatibility with fire. Amir of Snakes at Sunset has his own line of fires which look a little different and so far have produced leucistics without the yellow blotches so might be a different mutation, though perhaps of the same gene (i.e. in the same multiple mutant allele complex). There is also another line (inferno) that has been compared with fire but I don't think has yet produced a white snake. I think NERD might have their own line also.

The blue eyed leucistic complex is better known. The heterozygous with normal versions include lesser, butter, mojave, phantom, Vin Russo, mocha, and probably the dilute/hidden mutation that turns a lesser into a platy daddy. Some of the mutant combinations aren't all that white like the homozygous phantom or the platy (lesser//dilute). But lesser//phantom was the first blue eyed leucistics produced by RDR so phantom does belong in this group. There are probably more yet to be identified. I suspect the “special” that combines with mojave to produce crystal might be another.

I believe RDR last year crossed a black eyed yet (fire I think) with a blue eyed het (can't remember but probably lesser) and didn't produce leucistics indicating they aren't compatible between the complexes.