Albino -- a defect?

[mb90078]

Getting a little bit away from the intent of your post, but being albino (or snow) in the wild COULD POTENTIALLY be advantageous in the right circumstances...

[RedSidedSPR]

Like what?

[mb90078]

Like what?

Change in environment...suppose that something caused the ground to be lighter in color...they would blend in better against a white background as an albino or snow. It seems far-fetched, but this situation has played out probably hundreds of thousands of times (or more) in natural history...where an obscure mutation changed from being disadvantageous, to being advantageous due to environmental change.

The one that sticks out in my head is white and black moths. I wish I remembered more of the details of it, but it's been a few years since I've studied the subject. Natural Selection controls everything.

EDIT: To illustrate what I was saying (a long read): Natural Selection and Speciation
Or to basically get at my point in single picture form:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/graphics/bio106/nat-sel.jpg

[d_virginiana]

White canines are probably the best example of this. In certain areas, wild wolf/coyote populations are almost exclusively white, but the genes for light coloration disappear in only a few generations if they aren't in a very selective environment.

I can see how the light/dark background would potentially benefit hypos or other morphs, but I can't really think of a ground type that would keep a snow or pied from sticking out?

[mb90078]

White canines are probably the best example of this. In certain areas, wild wolf/coyote populations are almost exclusively white, but the genes for light coloration disappear in only a few generations if they aren't in a very selective environment.

I can see how the light/dark background would potentially benefit hypos or other morphs, but I can't really think of a ground type that would keep a snow or pied from sticking out?

Well...I'm reaching, but suppose that for some reason, a certain forest had trees which became infected with a disease that turned their leaves white upon falling in autumn. ...Or if there was a large amount of volcanic ash (though I'm not sure if that in itself would be too detrimental to the snakes) that occurred in an area over a consistent and long period of time. Again, over the course of natural history, stranger things have happened.

[PINJOHN]

i have always made the assumption that original'y people were drawn to them because of their rareness and difference, by the time lots of people had eventually got "their" albino, they had became just another garter in the trade, and i suppose that's how many of us now view them

[RedSidedSPR]

Interesting.

But that's camo alone... doesn't change the health issues.

[ssssnakeluvr]

never had any health issues with mine....

[RedSidedSPR]

Any albino has health issues... not HEALTH issues, I said that wrong, but the things I was getting at earlier.

Again, not health issues.. It's not THAT bad, which is why I don't have a problem with albinos if they're kept right.

[ConcinusMan]

I for one have no problems with producing healthy animals with anomalies in the pigmentation.

F5 & F6 just to produce more is of no interest to me at all.

I'm with Wayne on this. Many of the health issues you speak of are the result of excessive inbreeding for recessive traits, rather than from the defective gene itself. You would get a lot of these health issues you speak of, by inbreeding F5, F6 and beyond, even if the snakes color was perfectly normal. Now, you do want to avoid exposing these snakes to UV since they can sunburn. Other than that, the "defect" has no apparent effect on the longevity or any other health concerns. It doesn't hurt them to be albino. What hurts them is to be inbred for many generations in a row, in order to get to be albino.