Thanks for the input Jay.
I think goblin and yellow belly are the same snake but while related the phantom seems to have some valuable distinct properties from mojave. The homozygous mojave is a mostly white snake with a little dark color on the head while the homozygous phantom is a fairly dark snake. Interestingly before the homozygous versions of either where known there was a brief time when both RDR and TSK thought that maybe the phantom was a mojave but it now looks like they are two distinct different mutations of the same gene (along with several others including lesser/butter, Vin Russo, the hidden that turns a lesser into a platy, and the special that turns mojave into crystal).
I had originally hoped that the young Garcia adult female I found at the pet store in 2001 was something in the white snake allele complex and perhaps even a phantom but this year when the combo snake with mojave wasn't white I decided Garcia probably isn’t related to the lesser complex. The lesser + phantom is a white snake (karma). While I don't think anyone has made the mojave + phantom yet (hardly anyone has phantoms) I expect it to be mostly white but I guess we will know when someone does cross mojave and phantom when phantoms eventually (might be a while) become more common.
Some have pointed out that the Garcia's look like one or both lines of chocolate. I can see the similarity and they might turn out to be the same but from what I've been able to gather the belly of the original female isn't quite right. I finally did get a son from her this year but I don't know if he has the Garcia gene. He is a mojave and not as obviously the combo as his nice high pattern brown sided sister mojave Garcia in this picture. I just put him in with his first female tonight to see if he is ready to breed yet or not so with a lot of luck maybe I’ll be able to figure out if he is just mojave or mojave Garcia based on his offspring.
Reply With Quote
