All Angles Creatures

Amelanism Red Cornsnake

peer reviewedOCA2recessive

How it inherits

One copy
One copy shows nothing at all. The animal looks ordinary and is called a carrier, or “het”.
Two copies
Two copies, one from each parent, are needed before it appears.

Amelanism carrier × Amelanism carrier

Four ways the two can meet.

1 in 4het Amelanism
1 in 4het Amelanism
1 in 4Amelanism
1 in 4Normal
  • het Amelanism50%
  • Amelanism25%
  • Normal25%

A pale box is an animal that shows the morph. These are the odds for each egg on its own, not a promise about a clutch.

What this rests on

A peer-reviewed paper identifies the variant behind this morph in the gene OCA2.

  • Amelanism in the corn snake is associated with the insertion of an LTR-retrotransposon in the OCA2 gene.Sci Rep 2015
  • Color mutations in the corn snake (Elaphe guttata guttata): Review and additional breeding dataJournal of Heredity 1989
  • Heredity of albinism in the corn snake, Elaphe guttata guttata, demonstrated in captive breedings.Copeia 1962
  • Genetics and biology of coloration in reptiles: The curious case of the Lemon Frost geckos.Physiol Genomics 2023
  • The genome sequence of the corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus), a valuable resource for EvoDevo studies in squamates.Int J Dev Biol 2014

Entry in Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals

What happens if you breed it

Every pairing involving Amelanism, worked out gene by gene — including what the clutch can be and anything documented about the animals it produces.

See every Red Cornsnake pairing

Other Red Cornsnake morphs