Hognose Snake morph
Hognose Snake (Heterodon nasicus)
Purple/pink coloration
Produces distinctive grey-lavender coloration. Homozygous Lavender animals display a soft gray background with lavender, lilac, or purple-gray undertones. The warm orange tones of wild-type are reduced and shifted toward cool lavender and gray. Saddle marks typically appear as darker lavender to brownish-purple against the lighter lavender base. Lavender is independent from Axanthic: the two mutations produce visually distinct phenotypes (Lavender has a warmer purple-gray vs. Axanthic's cooler silver-gray), and complementation testing confirms they are at different loci. Some older sources erroneously conflate Lavender with Axanthic; they are distinct mutations. Lavender participates in combo morphs including Arctic (Axanthic + Lavender, producing an icy pale animal) and various Anaconda combos.
How to identify it: Gray base with lavender/lilac/purple undertones; saddle marks darker lavender to brownish-purple; eyes dark. Distinguished from Axanthic by the warmer purple-gray (vs. cool silver-gray) tone. Distinguished from wild-type by reduction of orange/yellow and presence of purple-gray tones. Color quality intensifies as animals mature.
Lavender follows a recessive inheritance pattern, carried on the Lavender allele (locus LAV).
Because Lavender is recessive, an animal needs two copies of the allele to show the trait visually. An animal with a single copy is called het lavender (heterozygous). A het animal looks normal but carries the gene, so pairing two het lavender animals produces, on average, one in four visual lavender offspring.
Arctic
Double recessive Axanthic + Lavender. Combining the yellow/red reduction of Axanthic with the grey-lavender shift of Lavender produces a very pale, icy animal with minimal warm pigmentation and soft lavender-gray tones. The result is an ethereal, cool-toned animal evoking an arctic appearance. Genetics modeled as Axanthic + Lavender; exact community definition varies.
Lavender Anaconda
Homozygous Lavender + heterozygous Anaconda. Combines the distinctive grey-lavender coloration of Lavender with the reduced pattern of Anaconda. Produces a soft lavender animal with greatly reduced or fragmented dorsal pattern. The lavender-purple tones show more clearly with reduced pattern complexity.
ReptiDex keeps morph, lineage, and pairing records for your whole collection, on iOS and the web.
Get started free