The term 'hypomelanistic' generally refers to a reduction in the amount of dark pigmentation in an animal. This is perceived as being an overall brightening which produces a more brilliantly colored animal.
The first instance I can recall of seeing or hearing about a Hypomelanistic corn snake was back in the 80s when my wife and I were visiting with Bill & Kathy Love. Bill called me over to a table and popped the lid off of an egg-hatching container and showed me a clutch of corn snakes with about a half a dozen of them substantially brighter colored than the rest of the clutch. I believe this was a project he was working with in collaboration with Jack Cole. Needless to say, a genetic trait that would reduce the darker pigments in a corn snake, but not extract it completely as in Amelanism, was indeed an intriguing effect.
Basically you can consider the Hypomelanistic gene to be a brightening agent for the corn snake. Kind of like the old commercials for laundry detergent. Brighter whites and more brilliant colors. So of course the thing to do was to breed this trait with everything under the sun! And to compound the situation, there seems to be more than just a few variations in Hypomelanism in itself. These haven't been categorized yet, nor fully understood, but there are enough variations in the way Hypomelanism expresses itself to provide a lot of food for thought.
In some instances, Hypomelanism acts like a catalyst. Not only providing it's own modification to the way an animal looks, but also apparently able to affect the way colors can express themselves. Ghosts, for instance, are often able to express a wide range of subtle pastel colors that are not even remotely visible in the 'A' Anerythristics they can be derived from. Ambers (Hypomelanistic Caramels) look very different from what one would expect them to be, leaving the Caramels as a poor shadow of the potential that Hypomelanism brings out in them.
One result of having so many projects involving the Hypomelanistic gene is that a Hypomelanistic Corn Snake has realistically lost it's identity. A Hypomelanistic corn that has it's roots in Miami Phase stock or even Caramel stock is going to be substantially different from one that has Lavender or Okeetee in it's ancestry. So anything classified as being 'regular hypo' will necessarily be extremely variable in coloration. Chances are it will also be carrying any number of exotic genes as well, but that's up to you to discover.
One recent development that needs to be mentioned here is that a new form of Hypomelanism has been uncovered in Bill & Kathy Love's Okeetee stock. They are currently marketing them as Hypomelanistic Okeetees. This form of Hypomelanism is NOT compatible with the previously identified strain being worked with for the last 15 years or so. In other words, if you breed one of these Hypomelanistic Okeetees from the Love's stock to ANYTHING else identified as Hypomelanistic, you will not get homozygous Hypomelanistic babies as a result. Instead the resulting offspring will be heterozygous for two different lines of Hypomelanism. At this time, no one knows what an animal homozygous for both lines of Hypomelanism will look like. Probably neither line will be able to be determined from the other, and quite likely a double homozygous animal will be indistinguishable from any of the single homozygous animals in the clutch.
This brings up the spectre of some real problems in the future identifying Hypomelanism when it shows up in a cultivar. Will it be a type 'A' or a type 'B'? Plans you have in place to breed something like a Hypomelanistic Lavender to a Hypomelanistic Okeetee and produce Hypomelanistic offspring could be in jeopardy unless you know the exact ancestry of the animals you re working with. As more and more people breed the new type 'B' Hypomelanism into other genetic lines, this will likely create a situation where the two lines will never be able to be separated again, much less identified. Probably what I would consider as a 'worst case' scenario will be animals that are heterozygous for 'A' Anerythrism, Charcoal ('B' Anerythrism), 'A' Hypomelanism, and 'B' Hypomelanism. It will be pretty nearly impossible to be able to put an accurate label on ANY offspring that come out of a mix like this.
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