Thoughts on an Anerythristic Plains Gartersnake?

[ConcinusMan]

I like them! I only have a few plains garters that I'm working with at the moment and the anery and blue axanthic are my favorites!

From Jeff Benfer's website: "The axanthic gene has not been completely well characterized or documented, but it has long been suspected that the axanthic gene and the anerythristic gene are co-allelic to each other. That is the two mutations are different alleles or slightly different mutations yet exist at the same loci or location on a gene. Thus, an axanthic phenotype is actually genotypically one copy axanthic gene and one copy anerythristic gene. Two copies of the anerythristic gene which is recessive, yields the anerthristic phenotype, a very dark almost solid black snake. However, two copies of the axanthic gene does not yield a phenotypic axanthic snake. Only when a snake inherits one copy of the axanthic gene and one copy of the anerythristic gene does the axanthic phenotype manifest itself as a black and blue snake."

In other words, the visual blue axanthics are actually double hets for axanthic and anery.

[BUSHSNAKE]

From Jeff Benfer's website: "The axanthic gene has not been completely well characterized or documented, but it has long been suspected that the axanthic gene and the anerythristic gene are co-allelic to each other. That is the two mutations are different alleles or slightly different mutations yet exist at the same loci or location on a gene. Thus, an axanthic phenotype is actually genotypically one copy axanthic gene and one copy anerythristic gene. Two copies of the anerythristic gene which is recessive, yields the anerthristic phenotype, a very dark almost solid black snake. However, two copies of the axanthic gene does not yield a phenotypic axanthic snake. Only when a snake inherits one copy of the axanthic gene and one copy of the anerythristic gene does the axanthic phenotype manifest itself as a black and blue snake."

In other words, the visual blue axanthics are actually double hets for axanthic and anery.

my friend Doug Wenzell found both the "axanthic" and "anerythristic" in the wild here in Illinois. They were both test bred(in the early 2000's) and he figured out how the genes work together and that information was passed on to Scott Felzer. He also told me how the genes worked and I also passed that information on to Scott and Jeff...they both didn't believe me. Scott claimed the "axanthic" was codominate and claimed he had bred them to everything and proved that....WRONG!! The correct information was put out there a long time ago and here we are in 2013 and this is a new discovery?? no, I think some people are freaking idiots