Spider Genetics Question

The spider is considered to be dominant since it does not have a known super form, but it does not always give spiders so therefore when you do a square it should be written as Ss and not SS, right. If so, breeding two spiders together should give you 25% normals 50% spiders and 25% super form, but since there is no super form, what does this become? Another spider? Does breeding two spiders give you a 75% spider and 25% normal. What happens to this fourth of the square? I have heard the idea that the super form of the spider is lethal and that 25% that would be the super simply die before they can form (infertile eggs, eggs that go bad during incubation) What are your thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

What are your thoughts?

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Excellent question! I have thought about this and asked various people. My thoughts are that even if you had a super form how would you ever tell? Spider to normal gives each baby a 50% chance of being spider. I have seen clutches of codom and or dom to normal yield 100% visuals. So yes a super would produce 100% visuals but this can also be done with an incomplete or dom gene.

No help...I know :weirdface

I've been trying to figure this out from the time I bought my spider male almost 2 years ago. I really am wondering how these genes work. If you use a square, then 25% SHOULD be supers, but no one has ever produced one. Has anyone ever had a spider that ONLY produced spiders? I doubt it which is why I am so curious to find out how this gene works. Same with the pinstripe.

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

The spider is considered to be dominant since it does not have a known super form, but it does not always give spiders so therefore when you do a square it should be written as Ss and not SS, right. If so, breeding two spiders together should give you 25% normals 50% spiders and 25% super form, but since there is no super form, what does this become? Another spider? Does breeding two spiders give you a 75% spider and 25% normal. What happens to this fourth of the square? I have heard the idea that the super form of the spider is lethal and that 25% that would be the super simply die before they can form (infertile eggs, eggs that go bad during incubation) What are your thoughts?

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the fact that spiders do not always produce spiders, doesn't mean the spider is not dominant. spider x normal each egg has a 50% chance of being spider, 50% chance of being normal. that is not to say 50% of each clutch will be spider. so in a punnett square spider would be "SS".

Your gonna open a whole new can of worms:colbert: There was a big thread on here a while ago about this. Search it, it's out there somewhere. It has been said that the super form is lethal I guess.

A spider IS considered dominant. I didn't say it wasn't. If it was written as SS, then 100% of the babies would be spider. The S represents the dominant spider gene. The spider will only pass on one allele, so if you hatch out ANY normals from a spider X something pairing, it has to be Ss because the spider obviously did not give the spider gene.

I will search for it. Sorry I'm pretty much the resident "doesnotusethesearchfunctionlikeanidiot" person. :D

I hope I didn't sound mean. I wasn't trying to be.:)

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Originally Posted by twistedtails

Your gonna open a whole new can of worms:colbert: There was a big thread on here a while ago about this. Search it, it's out there somewhere. It has been said that the super form is lethal I guess.

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yeah i've heard that too. but for the sake of a simple punnett square i use "SS". and until i see a super, dead or alive, i will call it dom

But using Ss doesn't make it any less simple. I guess it doesn't REALLY matter, but it just doesn't make sense to me to represent both alleles as dominant since the spider does not always give the spider gene. SS would indicate that it does, while Ss allows the animal to give the spider gene or not. Maybe I'm just really picky on how I do my punnet squares.

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

But using Ss doesn't make it any less simple. I guess it doesn't REALLY matter, but it just doesn't make sense to me to represent both alleles as dominant since the spider does not always give the spider gene. SS would indicate that it does, while Ss allows the animal to give the spider gene or not. Maybe I'm just really picky on how I do my punnet squares.

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all i am saying is unitill i see a super spider i use "SS". if there is a super form then it would be "Ss". but when i get tired of screwing around with punnett squares i just see what the "experts" say the combo will make, cuz high school was a long, long, long time ago.

What I don't understand is why you think SS doesn't result in a super form when using a punnet square.....:confused:

Ss X Ss (Spider x Spider)

.........S......s
S......SS.....Ss
s......Ss......ss

Results:
25% normal
50% spider
25% mythical super

SS X SS (Spider X Spider)

........S......S
S.....SS.....SS
S.....SS.....SS

Results:
100% spiders

When you breed two spiders, you still get normals. If you use SS when you do punnet squares, the spider will ALWAYS give a spider gene, which is not what happens UNLESS you have a super, which apparently no one has produced. Like I said, I'm just confused as to why you use SS.

no i think we are both wrong, if spider was/is dominant that would be SS, if it is co dom, then wouldn't it be more like "Ns"? being it is a het for super spider? oh i give up, for now. i'm gonna have to go do some reserch i guess. let me know what you figure out.

Dominant does not mean SS. Both letters represent an allele of a certain gene. If you use, SS, then that means the spider WILL ALWAYS give the spider gene, which would be the super form. So far, no one has produced a spider that ALWAYS gives the spider gene. Therefore, it is not SS. If it was breeding for a bumblebee would be like this....

SSpp X ssPp (spider X pastel)

........Sp
sP.....SsPp
sp.....Sspp

Results:
50% spiders
50% bumblebees

This is not what happens. I'm just trying to say that just because a spider is dominant does not mean it is represented as SS because a spider WILL give a normal gene if it is not a super. All dominant means is that if you breed two snakes and one gives the dominant gene and one gives a normal gene, the dominant gene will override the normal gene and cause the snake to display the phenotype. Recessives require both parents to give the gene in order for the gene to show itself. Co-dominants only require one parent to give the gene to show itself BUT if both parents give the gene, it displays differently (pastel vs super pastel). What people are trying to find out is what happens to the other 1/4 of the spider x spider punnet square. Since spiders do not always give the spider gene, there is no way for it to be SS. It has to be Ss. And when you write out a square for a Ss X Ss, you get SS, which would be the super form, BUT no one has ever produced one (as far as we know) so I was just asking about what happens to that 25%. Some say SS is lethal, but that has not been proven either.

What Jay said about the difference between dominant, co-dominant, and recessive!

All I have to add is that a lot of this thread has a common confusion between genotype and mutation type.

The ss, Ss, and SS are ways of writing the genotype. That is representing the two copies of a particular gene that the ball inherited from its two parents. The genotype is important because those are the two copies the snake has to pick from when passing one copy to each of its offspring. What the Punnett square represents is the odds per egg of the possible combinations of genotypes that could in theory be passed on. What happens to the ones that hit the SS odds is still a mystery.

The mutation type is different from the genotype. The mutation type is defined by how the different genotypes look (see Jay's phenotype discussion) relative to each other.

I just wanted to point out that the reason spiders produce a mix of spiders and normals is because they have the heterozygous for spider genotype. There is resistance to using "heterozygous" for anything other than recessive but it really does apply and if used instead of misuses of mutation type like "dominant form" there would be a lot less confusion.