super morphs BP

I am pretty sure I know that a vanilla cream is a super morph between a fire and vanilla. A puma is a super morph from a yellow belly and spark? Am I correct? Is there other BP that are different morphs that can make supers? Also, why is it that if I breed a vanilla cream and puma... I would not get a four gene morph or more Pumas and vanilla creams?

Fire and vanilla, and yellow belly and spark, are examples of allelic mutations. A parent will only supply one allele to its offspring, so it would throw either a fire or vanilla allele, or yellow belly or spark allele, but not both, to its offspring. The other side of the mutation equation will come from the other parent.

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Originally Posted by bcr229

Fire and vanilla, and yellow belly and spark, are examples of allelic mutations. A parent will only supply one allele to its offspring, so it would throw either a fire or vanilla allele, or yellow belly or spark allele, but not both, to its offspring. The other side of the mutation equation will come from the other parent.

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Okay so if jumbled these four snakes around to say yellowbelly vanilla and spark fire, shouldn't the same thing happen?

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Originally Posted by BCS

Okay so if jumbled these four snakes around to say yellowbelly vanilla and spark fire, shouldn't the same thing happen?

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With that combo and alot of luck you could end up hitting a double allelle being a puma cream. Which could make yellow belly fires and vanillas or spark versions of fire and vanilla at a minimum. With the allellic remember it simply acts as a "super" being that the mutated gene proteins fall on the same allelle but have to separated looks behind the mutation, where as the super is the same mutation filling that allelle so of course all the offspring are going to carry the heterozygous versions. Think of these simply as heterozygous and homozygous,incompletee or complete. Allellic mutations will always pass of one of the two mutations in there incomplete version and won't replicate itself where the super will always pass the incomplete version of whatever the mutation is. This works even with doubles say you have a super cinny super pastel all offspring if bred to a normal will be pewters. And so on just think of these as visual recessive that always produce 100 percent hets when bred just with a visual aspect behind it. Hope that wasn't to confusing lol, terrible at explaining stuff.

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Originally Posted by BCS

Okay so if jumbled these four snakes around to say yellowbelly vanilla and spark fire, shouldn't the same thing happen?

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Vanilla and Yellow Belly are not allelic, so the one parent could provide:
No mutation (normal)
Vanilla only
Yellow Belly only
Vanilla and Yellow Belly

Same for the other parent with its two genes.

And yes, if the odds gods line up and both parents throw both of their mutations into one offspring, you could get a fire spark vanilla yellow belly (aka puma cream) from the two parents.

A fire has a fire gene and normal gene sitting on that locus, that is why when bred to a normal, you have a 50/50 shot at fires/normals it gives one or the other
A vanilla has a vanilla gene and a normal gene sitting on that same locus, again you have a 50/50 shot at giving one gene or the other
A cream has a fire gene and a vanilla gene sitting on that locus, so you have a 50/50 shot at vanilla or fire. there is no normal gene on that locus to give.

Yellow belly is a yellow belly gene and a normal gene sitting on a different locus.

The reason fire and vanilla make the vanilla cream (and the reason that the vanilla cream can't produce more vanilla creams when bred to a normal) is that they are allelic. What this means is that fire and vanilla are at the same locus. Think of a locus as a place for genes to be. There can only be two genes on each locus at one time. As an example, mojave, lesser and special are all on the same locus. You can have any two of these genes in one snake (example: lesser and special), but you can never have all three. A locus is like a house for two people. They can both live there peacefully, but there aren't enough bedrooms for a third person.

Now let's make this more confusing. A mojave ball python has one mojave gene and one wild-type gene on the mojave locus. It has to pass down one of them. It can pass either the mojave gene or the wild-type gene.

A mojave lesser (http://www.worldofballpythons.com/morphs/lesser-mojave/) will never produce a normal with anything. That's because both mojave and lesser are on the same locus. Mojave takes up one spot on the locus, and lesser (instead of normal) takes the other spot. Again, the snake has to pass one of these genes. However, since lesser is in the spot normal would've been before, the snake can't pass a normal gene to the offspring. The same goes for the vanilla cream.

However, not all combo morphs are allelic. For example, the bumblebee can produce normals, pastels, spiders and bumblebees when bred to a normal. That's because pastel and spider are not on the same locus, so each still has a normal gene to pass down. Pastel lives in one house and spider lives in a different one, so they can both live in the same neighborhood (AKA snake).

The reason you wouldn't get a four gene morph is because the snakes can only pass down one of the genes on the locus. Think of breeding a super pastel (two pastel genes on the same locus) to a super cinnamon (two cinny genes on the same locus). You would get a bunch of pastel cinnamons, but no super pastel super cinnies. No super anything, actually.

That's as simple as I can think to make this. Uh... hopefully that cleared things up and didn't make them more complicated.