"Anery" Concinnus Arrived!

[Snaky]

Looks exactly like me male, here's a picture of him:


I truly like him and I'm the only one I know in Europe having 'anery concinnus'. I saved some females from a nest of previous year and next year I'll try to breed them again with the male. I hope I'll see the thread appear

They look great, very nice additions!

[charles parenteau]

wow amazing garter snake!!!Shannon your photos are awesome...

[ConcinusMan]

My oppinion is definately leaning towards anery making the most discriptive sense, when I look at that snake I think "anery". By the way with Shannon's awesome camera skills that snake is definately bad *** good looking. Would love to have one of them and an albino right now, I would be thinking about doing a little dance to make a "rocky mountain snowstorm"

I guess I'm as green as they come since I didn't understand any of that last sentence. First off, why would you only want one instead of a pair? second, there are no albino concinnus (prove me wrong) and I don't even know what to say about the snow dance.

[drui9201]

He wants an Anery & Albino pair of Concinnus to breed and make snow Concinnus.

[Scaley.Jade]

grrrr you still make me jealous

[Quibble]

Wow, great pics Shannon!
Genetics absolutely fascinate me, and this is one subject I can truly obsess over.

I would consider them anery because of the fact that they sort of look 'green'. It takes some form of yellow to do that, so there must be some there. I think if they were axanthic they would look more blue/silver instead of blue/green. Does anyone consider my opinion valid?

If i had a good photo editing program, i would take a pic of a normal concinnus, once filtering out red, and once filtering out yellow and seeing which pic looked closest to the odd ones. However im still not sure it would be a geneticaly appropriate guess.

[BUSHSNAKE]

hey Shannon love the pickeringii, you need a mate for it just like it!

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Haha yea I DO need a mate just like it! She's like a knockoff infernalis

My problem with all of this is that I don't want to call it anything definitve when in fact there is so much overlapping that goes on between red and yellow pigments. Red pigments, erythrophores...are actually a subtype of xanthophores. So actually an axanthic animal can lack more than just yellow. There are also orange colors that are considered yellow xanthophores, and there are other orange colors that are considered erythrophores. But erythrophores ARE xanthophores. Which is why apparently they'd like to call yellow xanthophores "luteophores" as you can see here...

this is why it's not just as simple as "well if they lack red they are anery, and if they lack yellow they are axanthic". It's just a lot more complicated than that and really you DON'T know unless you could see what's going on at the cellular level.

warning, may cause headaches!

Xanthophores - contain two major pigment bodies the pterinosomes containing pteridines and vesicles that contain fats with stored carotenoids. Another class of organelle may exist in which the pteridines are converted to drosopterins and some people have suggested the name drosopterinosome. However, since drosopterins are made from pteridines, this may be a bit of a splitter attitude, and really may not be valid. But it cannot be denied that yellow pteridine rich cells occur within microns of orange or red drosopterin rich cells, so there may be something to the separation. At any rate, xanthophores can be divided into at least two subtypes.

• Yellow xanthophores - contain organelles called pterinosomes that are pterinidine rich and range from creamy yellow to orange. Since these cells are yellow to yellow orange and the term xanthophore can apply to the red xanthophores as well, there is a good argument to refer to this subtype as luteophores, but that term has yet to catch on.

• Red xanthophores (erythrophores) - pterinosomes (drosopterinosomes) are rich in drosopterins which range from orange to red and even violet. These cells are more easily seen on histology than their yellow counterparts and can be seen in the pictures at the top of this page.

Hypoerythrism /Hypoerythristic - reduction in the amount of darker orange to red pigments so that the appearance of this color is largely absent except for traces or appears "washed out."

Anerythrism /Anerythristic - lack of production of pigments in the darker orange to red range.

Axanthism /Axanthic - lack of yellow and lighter orange pigments, depending on the point in the pigment cascade, this mutation can also cause corresponding anerythrism since erythric pigments (drosopterins) appear to come from the more yellow pteridines biochemically.

Hypoxanthism / Hypoxanthic - reduction int he amount of yellow or lighter orange pigments so that the appearance of this color is only found in trace amounts or appears "washed out." This may also result in hypoerythrism since the red pigments appear to be made from the yellow pteridines.

Also while we are at it... lets think about what we see called "anerythristic" plains garter snakes. That term has just got to be wrong. You take away red/orange pigments from a plains garter snake and you get a solid black animal with a stripe? They are at the very least, melanistic! If you removed some color from a plains garter snake, you'd end up with a gray washed out snake, but he'd still have a pattern and he wouldn't suddenly end up with 10x the amount of black on his body as a normal counterpart. A melanistic animal does not have to lack a pattern/ stripes. It just needs to have a much higher distribution of black pigment. Which, these snakes do. Even their belly and iris of their eyes is solid jet black, just like other melanistic snakes but NOT like other anerythristic snakes, which have more of a silver iris and still have relatively normal looking bellies, and patterns. Maybe they are melanistic AND anerythristic at the same time, but they are not plain anerythristic. There's more going on than that.

[ConcinusMan]

That's funny because I mentioned that the so-called axanthic plains looked melanistic to me. The reply was that he was referring to the genes affect of taking away yellow from snakes. Looks melanistic to me but what I understand, when it comes to breeding, the gene doesn't behave like you would expect from a melanistic gene.

Thanks for that post^^^ Sheds some light on the subject. Basically these could be axanthic or anerythristic but whichever is the case, the effect could the same when it comes to concinnus. Since even the normal snakes around NW Oregon appear very light looking orange, these "anery" snakes could be a case where the Xanthosphore cells are what is affected. If only Xanthosphores are involved in the production of the orange on a normal, the effect of this gene would be dramatic. If a different pigment is involved in say, a deep red concinnus, the effect would be insignificant. Either way, it's appropriate to call these anerythristic. Some breeders might not agree, especially it proves that the gene only affects Xanthosphores.

I think if they were axanthic they would look more blue/silver instead of blue/green. Does anyone consider my opinion valid?

If i had a good photo editing program, i would take a pic of a normal concinnus, once filtering out red, and once filtering out yellow and seeing which pic looked closest to the odd ones. However im still not sure it would be a geneticaly appropriate guess.

Your idea makes sense but when it comes to yellow, more than one type of pigment can produce what one could consider yellow so what if a snake had yellows produced by a combination of the two? We really don't know what's going on with the yellow in any concinnus since some individuals within a litter can have yellow stripes, some have that blue/green stripe. What I was thinking is if you take yellow away from the stripe, would it leave it looking blue-green? It could be that the gene only affects orange drosopterin cells and not red but that will take time and breeding to prove.

I'll do the photo editing and see what needs to be taken away to produce colors like these anery snakes. That is a good idea.

[ConcinusMan]

Is it theoretically possible to find out which cells dominate? I mean, if I took a scale off of the orange area of a normal from that location and took it to a lab, would they be able to determine which type of cell produces the orange? Not that I could afford it, just curious. Most, if not all of the orange concinnus in that area have a yellow stripe. Most if not all of these anery's have a blueish stripe. Coincidence? Hmm...

I'm leaning toward orange xanthosphores being the culprit in this case and in the case of that other anery I showed you, with a yellow stripe, red xanthospores are involved making that one anery, these axanthic, on a cellular level. That is assuming that genes can affect xanthosphores in a way that selectively removes red/orange and leaves yellow. This is so confusing.

Seems that axanthic and anerythristic can be one in the same so which term is used depends on the overall effect. If red is taken away from a normally red snake, anerthristic is used. If yellow is taken away, it's axanthic. But this involves orange so....???

Just when you think you understand...