Can Certain Variations of Dominant Morphs Effect how many Supers?

I realize this might be a silly question, and is really just for discussion purposes. I was just thinking about this today, if you are breeding two of the same dominant morphs, does the variation of the morph play a role in your odds of producing it's homozygous form?

For example, say you have a yellow belly with an actual very yellow belly and pair that with another YB very identical, could that increase your chances of producing more ivories? Or even the other way around, do you think pairing two very subtle yellow bellys can increase your odds?

Same with any other dominant morphs like two very light colored lessers, or two darker colored lessers...

So do you all think the variation of the dominant morph could have anything to do with the odds of making it's homozygous form? I honestly don't have an opinion on this, a part of me says that this could make sense and anythings possible. And another part of me just thinks it's silly to think that. Thoughts?

By the way I know guys like Brian Gundy have done some work with dominant morphs to make a different looking super. Such as selectively breeding mojaves to make the super mojaves head less dark. But I'm talking about odds.

doesn't matter, just look at a punnet square


you get the gene or you don't, color doesn't matter

Just correcting your info. Supers come from co-dominant pairings. Dominant morphs have no Homo form with regards to Ball Pythons.
YB's are co-dominant
Spiders are Dominant

Thanks for correcting, meant to put co-dom

As OWAL says, the appearance of the co-dom parents used shouldn't affect the odds. Using two co-dominant parents, you're going to have a 1 out of 4 (25%) chance of hitting the "super" regardless of how pretty the parents are.

I have found that some parents seem to be more "generous" than others in terms of giving me what I want morph-wise (this is with chinchillas, not snakes - I haven't yet bred enough snakes to notice any trends like this). However, I gotta believe that's just luck and not something inherent to those pairings (doesn't stop me from repeating those breedings every season, though :rolleyes: )

Doesn't effect what gene you get, but if you have ugly parents you get ugly kids.... lol

Let's see if I get it.

Does selective breeding works? Of course it does which is why you should always strive to work with the best example of a morph, however it does not changes the outcome ratio you will obtain with your pairing.

Whether you pair some good looking YB or Lesser or some bad looking one you will always get the same outcomes.

If you pair lesser to lesser (Co-Dominant) you will get 25% Super Lesser (BEL) - 50% Lesser and 25% Normal

If you pair YB to YB (Also Co-Dominant) you will get 25% Ivory + 50% YB and 25% Normal.

They won't affect the odds of a certain genotype, but they could affect the phenotype.

Meaning that two awesome smoking pastels have the same chance of producing super pastels that two ugly pastels do. So the genetic odds are identical.

However, since the two smoking pastels look better, then they could potentially produce better looking offspring than the ugly pastels, thus the phenotypes between the two pairings could be quite different.

Deborah and Matthew: yup, exactly ;)

ugly pastel x ugly pastel = 25% chance per egg of ugly super pastels (50% chance ugly pastels; 25% chance ugly wild-types)

awesome pastel x awesome pastel = 25% chance per egg of awesome super pastels (50% chance awesome pastels, 25% chance awesome wild-types)


... Of course, selective breeding isn't a 100% guarantee either ... Unfortunately an awesome animal can throw a few ugly ones, and vise-versa. But the more nice looking parents in the animal's background, the more likely it is to throw nice babies, and as you get a few generations down the road with selection of awesome offspring, you should start seeing your offspring get more consistently better and better ... :gj:

The definition of a dominant mutation is one where the heterozygous mutant and homozygous mutants are the same non wild type phenotype. Pinstripe is the only proven dominant ball python morph I'm aware of. BHB reports having a proven homozygous pinstripe that looks like a regular (heterozygous) pinstripe but produces 100% pinstripe offspring.

If homozygous spiders don't hatch that would qualify spider as being technically co-dominant because the homozygous mutants are different (dead) than the heterozygous visible mutants. A homozygous animal surviving to breeding is actually needed to prove if a mutation is dominant.