Re: A Lesson in Basic Genetics
I'm certainly confused, :P
Don't try and think of normal as dominant or codominant to other morphs.
Think of what the morph gene does in the heterozygous ( only one copy in the animal ) and homozygous ( two copies in the animal ) animals looks.
Spider is a really bad choice for this as nobody has a proven homozygous example so if you don't mind I will use pinstripe - where there is only a rumoured homozygous example. :rofl: :rofl:
Dominant:
One copy of the gene (hetrozygous ) makes a visually distinct animal from the normal wild type. Two copies of the gene ( homozygous ) look the same as the single copy hetrozygous animal. So there is no way to see if a pinstripe is het or homo visually. But you can see it is not a normal in both those forms.
Co-dominant:
This is a tricky one only because ball-python breders are using the wrong term - I think it should really be incomplete dominant if memory serves.
The heterozygous animal is visually different than the wild type but the homozygous animal looks different again.
So a pastel looks different to a normal and a super pastel looks different to both.
Recessive:
A heterozygous animal looks exactly the same as a normal animal that does not have any copies of the gene at all. You cannot look at the animal and be sure it has the gene for this type of morph.
But the homozygous animal looks visually different to a normal wild type.
People are always looking for subtle "markers" that can be used to identify heterozygous animals - but if they ever find a reliable one that morph would no longer be considered recessive at that point but co-dominant instead. :rolleyes:
So a normal and a het pied look the same but the homozygous pied animal would look noticeably different.
You can't really use any of these terms for wild type in any usefull way so it's best not to try.
If that makes sense.
dr del
Re: A Lesson in Basic Genetics
Joe Ellis was teaching me some of this today. Were still working out the Leopard breeding thing. Your layout makes it a lot easyer to understand, going to print and put up in my snake room. If thats ok to do?