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Posted by terry, albino tricolors on July 23, 2002 at 23:31:52:
Background: I published a magazine for 15 years, laid out pages & cropped pictures, selected PMS colors for tint blocks & etc. So maybe that experience has given me an unproductive approach to the issue of color morphs.
Here's the way I see it, in that context: BLACK--pure black, solid black, dark black, 100% black--is laid uniformly onto a page. (for printers in the audience, yes, it's true that for really rich black printers sometimes rollout 100% black AND 100% red) If you want to "lighten" that black, you "screen" it--you break it up into little, separated dots, the same way color pictures are printed in magazines. The smaller the dots and the farther apart they are, the lighter the "black"--which of course looks gray after this process.
But if you want to create brown, you might mix some of those dots in the right percentages of black, red, and blue, for example. Well, there's not any blue on a honduran, but htere is red and yellow. So if the black on a black ring of a honduran is reduced, is less intense, and there's some red in that area too, that's normally obscured by the black, then the resulting color might be a mix of black and red. Now, we know from amels that there's not any red there--you take away the black and the rings are white, at least until the snake ages and may develop light or even intense yellow in those regions.
Which would seem to mean that a hypomelanistic should ONLY be gray, when in fact many sure seem to be brownish, at least as juveniles (coastal plains, pyros, hondos). I can't account for that brown cast, but here's a thought--maybe the morph that we call amelanistic really eliminates not only black but some other pigments present in those black rings too, leaving only black until yellow sometimes shows up with age. That explanation would be consistent with what's observed. If that were the case, if there are other colors in those black areas, (and Jeff S., there are tests that could determine that, too--in fact, Dr. Bechtel refers to other colors present in black areas, in his book on Reptile Variants) maybe hypomelanistics have reduced black and when that resulting "gray" is mixed with the underlying pigments, you get brown. (another possibility is that the red/gray mix comes from capillary blood showing through the skin...certainly the "white" i've referred to is actually sorta pink on hatchling amel hondos, as it is on cal king amels...then, as the snake matures and the skin thickens, the animal becomes whiter and whiter...or in the case of hypo hondos, the purplish rings of youth become a dark charcoal that's sometimes difficult to distinguish from black).
Different tricolors have different degrees of various pigments, some are redder than others, some get yellow rings and some stay white or cream, etc., so I see nothing inconsistent with hypos looking a little different on different subspecies. In addition, on one subspecies the hypomel trait might reduce the black by about half, while on another the genetic effect might be to reduce it 30 percent-- or 70 percent, which would also result in differing "shades" where the black would normally be. It's also true that even within an individual subspecies--consider hondos again--there's no question that the degree or type of red varies from animal to animal--some are crimson, some are dark brick red, some orangish red. Those natural variations will also occur in any other color morph, it seems likely, so it's reasonable to expect variation and I believe that variation is present in the various hypos being discussed.
Finally, I agree with jeff that we may see two albino forms in some of the tricolros someday (who knows, maybe we already have, though i'm not aware of any evidence to support that). ONE might eliminate only the melanin, while the other might eliminate the melanin AND any other pigments present in that area.
If this same possibility exists with hypomelanism, then ONE hypomel morph might ONLY reduce black, leaving all the other underlying pigments in place, and another hypomel morph might--like the amel example above--reduce the black AND reduce the other pigments in that area. If this occurs, there could be two different hypomel morphs (hypomel no longer being as precise as i'd like in one of these two examples) which would LOOK different and be the result of different genetic changes.
Eventually, of course, out of curiosity I would try to breed double homozygous animals combining BOTH those hypo morphs, to see what the new lifeform looks like!
Ideas, anyone?
terry
