Decided to name this gene Aurora. Here's the story. It's long!

Have you not seen clutches of other dominant genes produce all of that gene or only one normal? I see it happen a lot w pin, spider, champ, etc.

I'd be more inclined to believe it is a dominant rather than recessive. The odds of the original Aurora being homozygous and the cinny having at least one copy of this previously unheard of gene seem extremely high. It's much more feasible that it's a simple dominant. Remember, those percentages for expected outcomes are theoretical. In the real world, you rarely get the odds that are predicted, especially when the sample size is so low. Just my .02

Paulh seems to be full of beans. All the percentages you see on WOBP genetics calculator are PER EGG not per clutch. So spider x pastel for example would result in EACH EGG would be 25% normal, pastel, spider and bumblebee. So it's easily conceivable that all the babies could be bees. In fact the odds are the same of the whole clutch producing normals. We've seen it many times on this site. Thread titles "Amazing odds!" Or "really bad odds :(" always happen. It's luck of the draw.

Another thing. Recessives really don't know much when one one half of the gene is expressed. Of you took 10 random babies and put them in a bin, could you pick out the het pieds? Do the same thing with pastel. Much easier. Since the OP can pick the babies out of a clutch, that leans toward Dom/codom. Another thing that points toward Dom/codom is the fact that the original snake when bred, reproduced babies that look like the original snake. If the gene was recessive, a second breeding to the offspring would have been needed to see a result.

Looks like an interesting little project. Good luck with it!

Interloc wrote, "Since the OP can pick the babies out of a clutch, that leans toward Dom/codom. "

People can pick albinos out of an albino x het albino clutch, too. Does that mean the albino mutant gene is not a recessive mutant?

Aurora could be a recessive mutant gene. If so, the original cinny male is het aurora, just by chance. As intoloc wrote, "It's the luck of the draw." That would really be beating the odds, but stranger things have happened.

While I think the odds favor aurora being some sort of dominant mutant, the possibility that it is a recessive mutant cannot be rejected yet. More data is needed.

The only other possibility that I can think of, if its NOT simply a dominant gene that brightens, is something like het daddy.. Which would be more along the lines of what you're saying. A mutant recessive type gene. Things like that do produce visual hets that can effect other morphs visually to the trained eye, but only react drastically when combined with certain other genes..

More breedings will be done to light morphs to rule these things out of course, but as it stands, it's a gene that immediately reproduces itself no matter what it's put to so until then, I'm sticking with it being a dominant brightening and pattern gene.

You are sticking your neck out a bit farther than I'd feel safe doing. But YMMV.

It will be interesting to see what an aurora x aurora mating from the first clutch of babies produces. Outcrossing is good because it will increase genetic diversity. I'd also like to see what aurora looks like without any other color/pattern mutant genes in the mixture.

There have already been two Aurora x aurora breedings.. The cinny x cinny, and the original Aurora dam x Aurora male offspring.. That pairing with the two "normals" was the clutch I had problems with but it doesn't appear to be gene related because every egg from the A cinny x A cinny hatched healthy, and again, they are all showing the same brightening/pattern gene. I've been working with this for nearly 5 years. I do wish the other clutch had all survived so I could have seen more.

Unfortunately, neither aurora x aurora mating tells us much about the genetics. The aurora mother x aurora son mating did not produce any living young so does not need to be considered. The aurora brother x aurora sister mating would tell us something if there were any non-auroras among the babies. As all of those babies were auroras, there is insufficient data to come to any conclusions about the genetics.

It will be interesting to see what outcrossing auroras to several different unrelated females produces. And what half a dozen or so aurora x aurora clutches produce.

I agree that the problems with the mother x son clutch are probably not related to the aurora gene.