#corn snake morph identification

[omg-snakes]

Hello! I need some help with corn snake genetics, if you'd be willing to lend your time and knowledge ^^ I recently went to a snake convention and got me a new corn snake baby. It was sold to me as a mystery motley, so I've been trying to find out for a few days now what her genetics could be. I know for a fact she's Motley because of her patternless stomach, but the rest I'm not so sure about. She seems to be a type of Amel (she has orange eyes & pupils) but I hesitate to call her one because her color is more faded than that of a typical Amel. I'm thinking she could be some kind of hybrid? Then again, I don't know much about genetics. Here's some info on her parents, which might help determine her morph. Her mother is an Anery Ultramel Hurricane Motley and her father is a Lavender Ultramel Motley. The baby in question: (I also have pictures of her siblings, which I could send in later if you need more information)

Hey friend!

First off, corn-gratulations on your new baby! They're super duper cute and their coloration is just lovely.

I'm... A little concerned that the person who sold you this snake knew the morphs of the parents but doesn't know the morph of this snake. That's a big red flag for me. Is it that they hatched something unexpected, are they unsure of how to identify the phenotypes of various genes, or are they not taking the time to learn genetics and just admitting that they have no clue what they're doing??

...Moving on.

It's funny that you mention hybrids because Ultra is not a natural corn snake gene and is the result of hybridization! The Ultra gene came from crossing a grey rat snake with a corn snake. Ultra is allelic to Amel and can result in a third visual morph that's kinda in-between Ultra and Amel, and that's how we get Ultramel. If anybody remembers doing punnett squares in biology class, you may be able to visualize that if we were to breed two Ultramel snakes we'd have a clutch of babies that will hatch about 25% Ultra, 25% Amel, and 50% Ultramel.

So let's think about the possible combinations for the two parent snakes:

Anery Ultramel Motley X Lavender Ultramel Motley

Possible outcomes:

1:2 Ultramel Motley het Anery, Lavender

1:4 Ultra Motley het Anery, Lavender

1:4 Amel Motley het Anery, Lavender

The snake in your photo doesn't look like any of these. There's no hint of Ultra and they are amelanistic for sure, but we're seeing muted reds/yellows and enhanced peach tones which is more consistent with Lavender/Amel combos like Opal.

Not to say that Ultramel Motley is a particularly rare gene combination, but I'm suspicious that this seller knew their morphs specifically but didn't identify the babies so I'm going to say it's very, very likely that these parent snakes are siblings.

If that's the case, it would be reasonable to say that the actual genetics of the parents are Anery Ultramel Motley het Lavender and Lavender Ultramel Motley het Anery.

Possible outcomes:

2:16 Ultramel Motley

2:16 Ultramel Lavender Motley

2:16 Ultramel Anery Motley

2:16 Ultramel Moonstone Motley

1:16 Amel Motley

1:16 Opal Motley

1:16 Snow Motley

1:16 Lavender Snow Motley

1:16 Ultra Motley

1:16 Ultra Lavender Motley

1:16 Ultra Anery Motley

1:16 Ultra Moonstone Motley

So looking at that spread, we can see that Opal Motley, which your little one does strongly resemble, is in the list. They're a bit more orangey than expected for an Opal, so there may yet be something else in play. Or I could be totally wrong! That's an option, too!

If you wouldn't mind sharing sibling photos, as well as any/all information about the seller (privately if you prefer, up to you), I can grab my deerstalker hat and my calabash pipe and we'll see if we can't unravel this mystery!

[sleepysnakes]

Can anyone tell me what morph my new dog is?

[i-m-snek]

Can you do corn snake morph identification? I suspect he’s amelanistic but I’m not sure. ___________ Amelanistic for sure, but possibly another gene thrown in as well that darkens the reds a bit? Its hard to tell, amel over powers everything haha

[omg-snakes]

Hey there! What’s your expertise in identifying corn morphs? I have two I’m not exactly sure what they are and wanted to see if I could pick your brain a bit :)

Hiyas!

I've been working with corn snakes for a good long while and I'm pretty heavily into genetics. I'd probably be fairly confident giving you a good idea of what you're looking at.

That said, there are several morphs that look very similar, there are exceptions to every "rule," and any determination I could make from a photo without knowing the lineage of the snake would be purely an educated guess based on phenotype and not necessarily valuable for establishing breeding genetics.

I'll do my best to help!