Calico's - Any lethal combos to stay away from?

Since I've decided to start a breeding project I began looking ahead for potential morphs I would like to work with. I looked around the net and could not find anything with respects to lethal combos using calico's / sugar's. I'm familiar with the current lethal combos to date and I'm hoping this one doesn't fall into said category. I really like what I'm seeing with calico's / sugar's. Any input on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time. :)

Not that i know of or have heard of. :gj:

That's positive. Thanks!!! :banana:

We have been looking into them here. Haven't heard or read anything negative.

Just to echo what was already said I haven't heard of any lethal combos where the calico gene was the problem. :)

as far as calico combined with other genes, there is nothing lethal (as far as i know). calico x calico is another issue. same with spider x spider or pinstripe x pinstripe. with no known homozygous form it is accepted that the super form is lethal. since a super form never shows up and they have to have an allele from each parent, the only logical conclusion is it's lethal.

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Originally Posted by TheSnakeGeek

as far as calico combined with other genes, there is nothing lethal (as far as i know). calico x calico is another issue. same with spider x spider or pinstripe x pinstripe. with no known homozygous form it is accepted that the super form is lethal. since a super form never shows up and they have to have an allele from each parent, the only logical conclusion is it's lethal.

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^^^^ Uh....

Um, okay. Perhaps it's accepted by YOU that this makes sense, but it does not. It's been proven by countless breeders, (even in Kevin's Lethal Combos video he references it) that a dominant gene does not HAVE a homozygous form. That is the whole point of them being dominant. If there was the possibility of a homozygous form, it would be a co-dominant gene. Breeding a spider to a spider is not lethal. It might not be SMART due to the spider gene's dingy nature (although the rumour of getting super wobbley spiders from breeding two together has been dispelled as well). Of course there are times when things go wrong, it's nature. The super champagne that was hatched and did not survive, that does not mean that dominant genes can have a homozygous form. It means in that one instance, something went wrong on a genetic level and caused an anomaly. If someone were to breed two calicos together, they'd just get a good majority of calico offspring. Same with spiders and pinstripes. I've bred pinstripe combo males to pinstripe females more than once and have never seen an issue come of it.

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Originally Posted by Toolarmy1

^^^^ Uh....

Um, okay. Perhaps it's accepted by YOU that this makes sense, but it does not. It's been proven by countless breeders, (even in Kevin's Lethal Combos video he references it) that a dominant gene does not HAVE a homozygous form. That is the whole point of them being dominant. If there was the possibility of a homozygous form, it would be a co-dominant gene. Breeding a spider to a spider is not lethal. It might not be SMART due to the spider gene's dingy nature (although the rumour of getting super wobbley spiders from breeding two together has been dispelled as well). Of course there are times when things go wrong, it's nature. The super champagne that was hatched and did not survive, that does not mean that dominant genes can have a homozygous form. It means in that one instance, something went wrong on a genetic level and caused an anomaly. If someone were to breed two calicos together, they'd just get a good majority of calico offspring. Same with spiders and pinstripes. I've bred pinstripe combo males to pinstripe females more than once and have never seen an issue come of it.

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Heh, Dominate just signifies that it only takes one gene to express it. All known traits have two copies of the gene, one from mom, one from dad. There are polygenic traits that are sometimes controlled by more than 2 copies (Tiger gene in moreliea spilotes comes to mind). But just because a gene is dominate does not mean it does NOT have to have a homozygos form. It just means that the homozygos form is not phenotypically different. But IS genetically different, where the homozygous offspring of the dominate trait will ONLY produce the trait from any and every breeding because it only has that gene to give.

End very basic genetics rant.

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Originally Posted by reptileexperts

But just because a gene is dominate does not mean it does NOT have to have a homozygos form. It just means that the homozygos form is not phenotypically different. But IS genetically different, where the homozygous offspring of the dominate trait will ONLY produce the trait from any and every breeding because it only has that gene to give.

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Thanks! Given the examples above I fully understand. :gj:

So far I'm liking what I am hearing then. I appreciate everyone's input on the matter. Thanks so much. :D

FYI - It was the Nerd (Kevin) video on lethal combos that prompted the topic.

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Originally Posted by Toolarmy1

^^^^ Uh....

Um, okay. Perhaps it's accepted by YOU that this makes sense, but it does not. It's been proven by countless breeders, (even in Kevin's Lethal Combos video he references it) that a dominant gene does not HAVE a homozygous form. That is the whole point of them being dominant. If there was the possibility of a homozygous form, it would be a co-dominant gene. Breeding a spider to a spider is not lethal. It might not be SMART due to the spider gene's dingy nature (although the rumour of getting super wobbley spiders from breeding two together has been dispelled as well). Of course there are times when things go wrong, it's nature. The super champagne that was hatched and did not survive, that does not mean that dominant genes can have a homozygous form. It means in that one instance, something went wrong on a genetic level and caused an anomaly. If someone were to breed two calicos together, they'd just get a good majority of calico offspring. Same with spiders and pinstripes. I've bred pinstripe combo males to pinstripe females more than once and have never seen an issue come of it.

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a dominant gene does not have a homozygous form? really? did you not pay attention in your high school biology class at all? do you believe snakes don't have to follow the same genetic rules that everything else on earth has to follow? the problem here is the whole genetic slang or "laziness" the reptile breeding hobby has come to use. you cannot take the words of the big breeders as God's. what if i told you that with all the genetic mutations we breed for in ball pythons right now, there is not a single known co-dominant gene? what you call co-dominant is actually incomplete dominant. and by definition, a true DOMINANT gene appears the same in homozygous form as it does heterozygous form. this is the case with every living thing on the planet. now, if there is no such thing as a homozygous dominant, how do you even define dominant? everything on this planet inherits 2 alleles at each locus, one from mom and one from dad (except in the rare case of parthenogenesis, but that's irrelevant here).

to put it in simple terms, calico mommy is perfectly capable of passing on the calico allele right? she can throw calico babies, so that must be the case. calico daddy can throw calico babies too because he can pass on the calico allele as well. each parent has a 50% chance of passing on their calico allele. a 25% chance that both of them will (as a simple punnett square will show you). now what if calico mommy is bred to calico daddy and they both pass on their calico allele? do you think daddy's calico allele just runs away and says "no! i'm not going"? if you do, i'm going to have to politely disagree with you. that's just not how genetics work.

now with how long the calico mutation (or spider or pin) has been around, there has never been a homozygous form produced. so what happens when mom passes on the calico allele and dad passes on the calico allele? the baby never develops: it's nowhere to be seen. the only logical conclusion is that the homozygous form is lethal.

when i say spider x spider, or calico x calico, or pin x pin is lethal, i don't mean that in the sense that you'll have to deal with dead or deformed babies. the babies just simply never develop. you'll never see them.