Not new to Thams, but new here!

[Charis]

You must forgive me for being so naive. I really don't know what you mean by "het" other than heterosexual.

Most snake morphs are reccessive, needing a matched pair of genes, one from the mother & one from the father to show the phenotype. One having that matched set would be called homozygous, or homo. One carrying one normal gene & one, say anery gene, would look normal, but it would be possible for that snake to have offspring that show the phenotype, if it is bred to a homo snake or another snake carrying a normal & anery gene. Having the two different genes is called heterozygous, but is mostly shortened to hetero or just het. So I have two corn snakes that are homo charcoal & homo hypo, making them phantoms, but they are also possibly het for amel. If that makes sense.

[gregmonsta]

Hypo-, maybe. But not an-. Or did you mean the one in the necropsy?

The one in the necropsy for sure ... Hans' comes close though ... would that be Hypo-anerystic? ... or shall we call it a low-red ... or 'green phase' lol ... too confusing, I know. But it definately is a red-diminishing trait

[Stefan-A]

would that be Hypo-anerystic? ... or shall we call it a low-red ... or 'green phase' lol ... too confusing, I know. But it definately is a red-diminishing trait

Hypoerythristic. Hypo- is reduced, an- is lacking.

[gregmonsta]

Hypoerythristic. Hypo- is reduced, an- is lacking.

Cheers

[Mike Spencer]

Female? you must be kidding me! are you serious? are we talking about the same snake? The one with the tail at the topmost part of the picture? No way! Are you sure you didn't get that one mixed up with another snake? If what you're saying is true, and that snake is confirmed to have actually given birth, I'm blown away. Forget about probing. Not accurate or even necessary with this garter, but confirmed female? Forgive me, but I don't believe it. There has to be some mistake. It couldn't be more obviously male if it if it were dragging it's testicles and hemipenes (can I say that without getting into trouble?) behind it.

The Multnomah County, Oregon origin I have no doubt about. He looks just like the male that I had for about 20 years (wild-collected in Clark Co. Wa) and he looks just like any other typical male found in Multnomah or Clark counties. I also have no doubt as to the origin of the obvious female, as her mostly orange head/face is typical of Oregon and CA individuals found farther south such as those found in Polk Co., Benton Co., Oregon, and perhaps coastal northern CA.

BTW, females (and males) of those two (clark, multnomah) counties also have a mostly black head with blue-green neck and just a faint spot of orange on the largest upper labial scales. Some of the offspring produced by my Clark Co. pair and observed wild adults, also have indistinct side stripes which are atypical and usually only found on females.

In all these years, I have never been wrong about the sex of T. ordinoides, T.s. concinnus, or T. sirtalis, based only on examining the snakes or seeing a clear photograph as long as they were close to sexual maturity. No probing needed. If that is indeed a female, I'm thrilled to be blown away. First time for everything I guess.

All that said, I'm also thrilled and blown away to see, in one place, (this forum) in such a short time, more than one person other than myself, that keeps T. s. concinnus. All these years, and I've been online since around 1994, I never stumbled across anyone else who had this subspecies of T. sirtalis. I chocked it up to the limited range of the subspecies. Honestly, I came here because I am missing my babies. I must go out next spring and get a pair of youngsters and start all over for another 20 years enjoyment. Having a great time. Thanks for sharing!

Time to get blown away, because she is completely female. Both of the normals in that picture are female. I honestly couldn't believe it and got 2nd opinions on her as well, but I got babies from her this year.

It is nice meeting another concinnus fan, and just a little piece of information, but concinnus does not reach into California at all. I've lived in northern CA my entire life and have found 11/13 garter species in the state now, and will have the rest by early next year.

I'll have a lot of babies available next year. I'm sold out this year.

[Mike Spencer]

You must forgive me for being so naive. I really don't know what you mean by "het" other than heterosexual. I also had never heard of a "anery" T.s. concinnus until this thread. I know what you mean by "anery" I had just never known that there was such a thing for T.s. concinnnus. I tend to think that this "anery" is nothing more than a T. sirtalis with a pattern similar to concinnus. That's not so unusual. I've seen T. sirtalis in my area with a similar spotted pattern on the sides but habitat and habits distinguished these individuals from concinnus even though they often share the same habitat.

I have never seen an anerythristic T.s. concinnus in the wild and I've seen thousands of concinnus in the wild, over the years. Not even a melanistic or any other atypical one other than being very faint in color overall, and perhaps the oddball or two with distinct atypical latteral stripes or nearly all black with barely any orange spots, but I had chocked that up to intergrades with T. sirtalis. How are we sure that this "anery" is really concinnus? Someone enlighten me.

Het stands for heterozygous. It is a term used when you breed an animal showing a recessive trait (which means it's homozygous) with an animal not showing the trait (meaning that it is either normal or het as well). A het animal will be a carrier of the recessive gene, but, as a recessive gene, it willl not be showing. Therefore, it will appear normal, but will carry the gene for the trait. The only way for it to produce offspring that will show the trait is to breed it to either another het (for the same trait) or one that is homozygous (showing the same trait). If you breedtwo hets together, then you 'should' get 1/4 homozygous babies, 1/4 normal babies, and 1/2 normal babies that are het for the gene. Now, because the normals and hets look the same, there is no way to tell the hets from the normals without breeding them out, they these are considered 66% hets, as 2/3 of them 'should' be hets.

If you breed a het to a homozygous animal (again, same traits) the outcome 'should' be 1/2 homozygous and 1/2 hets.

If you breed 2 homozygous animals, you'll get all homozygous animals.


Both of the anerys are WC stock from a locality that I found. I've heard of people trying to say that they are just pickeringi intergrades, but my locality for them is in west central Oregon. Way south of Puget range and I've only seen 3 at this locale out of the couple hundred I've seen this year.

When you say T. sirtalis, could you please be a little more specific? Because sirtalis is only the species name (unless of course you're referring to T. sirtalis sirtalis (eastern garter). Are you talking intergrades with pickeringi? Fitchi?

I only know of one other person who knows my locality where I found them, and I am not in a position to let it be publicly known.


There is a line of Anery concinnus in Europe as well, and I believe there is one in Australia, and they look just like mine... I have a lot of people that agree that mine are anery.


I hope this helped you understand some basic genetics.

[Odie]

Hi, from Oregon, Mike

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Female? you must be kidding me! are you serious? are we talking about the same snake? The one with the tail at the topmost part of the picture? No way! Are you sure you didn't get that one mixed up with another snake? If what you're saying is true, and that snake is confirmed to have actually given birth, I'm blown away. Forget about probing. Not accurate or even necessary with this garter, but confirmed female? Forgive me, but I don't believe it. There has to be some mistake. It couldn't be more obviously male if it if it were dragging it's testicles and hemipenes (can I say that without getting into trouble?) behind it.

Haha, quite honestly, I look at the tail of that snake and see quite an obvious taper, it looks female to me!!! The overall snake has a more male-like shape but it still looks like a female. All of my concinnus males are incredibly bulgey and long and thick at the tail!!! My female concinnus's have decently thick tails, sort of like that snake, but males are very, very obvious. I'm very good at visually sexing thamnophis... I think what is throwing you off, is the severe curve in the tail causing a bit of a thickness illusion!

[Mike Spencer]

Haha, quite honestly, I look at the tail of that snake and see quite an obvious taper, it looks female to me!!! The overall snake has a more male-like shape but it still looks like a female. All of my concinnus males are incredibly bulgey and long and thick at the tail!!! My female concinnus's have decently thick tails, sort of like that snake, but males are very, very obvious. I'm very good at visually sexing thamnophis... I think what is throwing you off, is the severe curve in the tail causing a bit of a thickness illusion!

You're right on the money. She's definitely female.

It is often tough to sex just from a picture because there could be a number of factors that might make it appear different. Just like the curve you mentioned.

[ConcinusMan]

Wow thanks everyone for all of the great info. I've been breeding snakes (mostly concinnus garters) and lizards and a few amphibians for many, many years but just as a hobby really so I never learned much about genetics, recessive genes, etc. This has been very informative.

@ aSnakeLovinBabe: Not you too! another concinnus owner? I can't believe it. 15 years ago, hardly any Thamnophis breeder even knew what I was talking about and was totally unfamiliar with the subspecies. Now I'm hearing about concinnus breeders on other continents and I've found so many right here in this forum. Wow. Oh, and it wasn't "thickness" that threw me off. It's the long, thin body and tail that made me think it was male. The overall gradual tapering. Of course, from the photo, I don't have the option of looking underneath to see the distance from vent to tail tip.

@ Mike Spencer. You know, I never even thought about it. I mean, we have T. sirtalis here (like I said, not very common though) that are NOT concinnus but I really don't know what they are. Or at least, they are sirtalis when using ID keys but lack the coloration/pattern of concinnus, and clearly don't fit any other local candidates' descriptions but do fit descriptions of T. sirtalis supposedly only found in the Puget Sound area. I just know that they are sirtalis and NOT any of the other species we have, and that they are NOT concinnus. I suppose I could be mistaken. That's for sure. It's a mess around here with garters. Some are easy to distinquish such as T. s. concinnus and T. ordinoides, but we also have Thamnophis atratus (usually in huge numbers where they are found) Thamnophis elegans, T. couchii, and those are just a few of the top of my head. Jeez, the list goes on. Even more confusing is some of the one's I listed have subspecies living in the same habitat, and there are many individuals that just aren't described or fit a description. It's confusing, that's for sure. Someone at the University of WA suggested to me that our local concinnus having approximately 30% or so with side stripes and almost no red on the sides/head meant that it was likely to intergrade with other sirtalis' but I just didn't agree for some reason I can't think of right now. Oh yeah, now I remember. My pair of concinnus produced a few offspring with lateral stripes even though both parents lacked them.

I did also have a question regarding our local melanistic ordinoides. Is that a trait that can be encouraged/promoted by selective breeding? I don't know how the genes work. I just know that melanistic individuals can be found here, but rarely and that all of my captive bred ordinoides varied greatly in color/pattern even in the same brood.