Im still confused

I still cannot wrap my head around co-dom and dominant. They sound the same. Breed a pastel to a normal, you get 50% chance of pastel. You breed a pin to a normal, you get a 50% chance of pins. Pastel is co-dom and pin is dom, so what makes them different?

Breeding a pastel to a pastel will throw 50% super pastels, hence the codom. Pin x pin will only produce more pins and normals. Co-doms have a super form. Mojos, lessers, butters, womas, pastels, yellow bellies, phantoms, fires, etc. all have super forms so they are co-doms. Spiders and pinstripes don't have a visual super form, so they are dominant. You can think of co-doms as visual hets for the super forms, ie. lessers are hets for BELs, and since you can visually tell a lucy from a normal it's a co-dom.

Co-doms have visable heterozygous markings. Doms just have the homozygous markings. Well, thats they way I like to think of it

I believe the difference has to do with the alleles the snake carries... a snake carrying a dominant gene carries two alleles for that gene. A snake carrying a co-dom trait only carries one allele for that gene.

For instance: a pastel (co-dom) bred to a pastel (co-dom) creates a super pastel (dominant).

I think?


EDIT: Ah, nevermind... Jake's the man :)

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

I still cannot wrap my head around co-dom and dominant. They sound the same. Breed a pastel to a normal, you get 50% chance of pastel. You breed a pin to a normal, you get a 50% chance of pins. Pastel is co-dom and pin is dom, so what makes them different?

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A co dominant gene works the same in a punnet square as a dominant gene, the major difference is the expression of those genes.

The Co-dominant gene is just that, when in the heterozygous form is only being partly expressed. The Pastel is the heterozygous form, the homozygous form is the Super Pastel.

When it is a pastel, the gene is only showing a small part of its true potential, we can't really see the full expression unless it is homozygous (Super)

To see the full expression of a co-dominant gene, you MUST have a homozygous animal. The homozygous form of a pastel is a Super Pastel. A Super Pastel is the full expression of the co-dominant gene.


A dominant gene is fully expressed whether it is het or homo. There is no difference between the heterozygous animal and the homozygous animal.

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Originally Posted by ajeff

Co-doms have visable heterozygous markings. Doms just have the homozygous markings. Well, thats they way I like to think of it

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Dominant mutations actually show the visual trait as a heterozygous animal, just like co-dominant animals do. The difference is in the homozygous appearance of the animal. All first generation mutations that throw visual offspring are first labeled as proven dominant. It takes another generation of breeding to see if dom x dom has a new, visable trait in the homozygous form. If it does, it's now proven to be a co-dominant trait. If it doesn't throw supers in a homozygous animal it's still only a dominant trait.

Well, when something is co-dominant, or incomplete dominant, that implies that there are different looks between the normal form, the heterozygous form and the homozygous form. A pastel, which is a co-dominant mutation, is kind of a blend between a normal looking ball python and a super pastel. Genes come in pairs, so when you have only one half of the gene with the pastel mutation (the heterozygous form), it still affects the look, but not enough to completely overpower the normal look. A Dominant mutation DOES completely overpower the normal look whether it's in the heterozygous form or the homozygous form and so the heterozygous form and the homozygous forms look the same as each other.

so a spider... wouldnt that be codom because it can make a super, or is it considered dom since its already a visual.

mojave is a het for bel right? so is the mojave co dom?
spider is dom, but what happens if you mix spider (dom) and pastel (dom) to make bee, wouldnt that mean the animals are codom?

so confusing :rolleye2:

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Originally Posted by AshleyB

so a spider... wouldnt that be codom because it can make a super, or is it considered dom since its already a visual.

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I've never seen a super spider ;)

gotcha.. so it is dom.

If there is no super form - it's a dom. If there IS a super form - it's a co-dom.

So far, no one has proven a super spider or super pin.

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So a spider... Wouldnt that be codom because it can make a super, or is it considered dom since its already a visual.

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Spiders do NOT appear to have a 'super' (homozygous) form. But just because nobody has ever been able to verify a homozygous spider exists, you can't really say for sure one way or the other. I prefer to play it safe and say that spiders are 'some kind of dominant mutation'

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but what happens if you mix spider (dom) and pastel (dom) to make bee, wouldnt that mean the animals are codom?

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The individual mutations are considered either co-dominant or dominant or recessive. Not the entire animal. You could produce a hypomelanistic pastel spider and have three different kinds of mutations in one animal, but that wouldn't make the snake either recessive, co-dominant or dominant.

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Originally Posted by AshleyB

so a spider... wouldnt that be codom because it can make a super, or is it considered dom since its already a visual.

mojave is a het for bel right? so is the mojave co dom?
spider is dom, but what happens if you mix spider (dom) and pastel (dom) to make bee, wouldnt that mean the animals are codom?

so confusing :rolleye2:

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A spider can't make a super, so it is a dominant mutation. Mojave is het for BEL so it is a co-dom. If you breed a spider (dom) to a pastel (co-dom) you can get bees. This isn't a super form though, it's a combo with each bee carrying one copy for each of the two mutations. So if you breed two bees together you can get super pastel spiders (killer bees), but you can't get pastel super spiders because spiders are dominant, and don't have a visual homozygous form. At least not one that differs from the heterozygous form. Co-dominant basically means that the heterozygous animal will display a visual mutation that is leading to the super form or homozygous animal.

If an animal needs 2 of 2 alleles to have the mutation to show a visual morph, that is the recessive gene. A piebald is a recessive because it needs both alleles of that gene to display a visual difference. Albinos and caramel albinos are also recessive because they need both copies to display the visual trait. If say (this isn't the case) caramel albinos would show the trait with only one copy of the gene, but having two copies of the gene increased this lack of melanin to the point where the homozygous caramel had no black pigment (the albino), we would say that caramels are co-doms, and their super form was an amelanistic snake. The caramel would be het for albino. Right now since albinos are a recessive mutation we just call them hets for albino because albino hets don't have any different look from a normal. But if the hets looked like caramels, we would call caramels co-doms, and we would call true albinos super caramels or t-albinos. I'm starting to confuse myself here, but this is basically it:

Recessive - needs 2 of 2 copies of the gene to show the trait - hets look normal
Dominant - only needs 1 copy to show the trait, but having 2 copies looks the same as if it had one. There are no hets (it either is a spider or it isn't) and it has no visual super form
Co-dominant - only needs 1 copy to show the trait - having 2 copies of the gene will produce a super form - co-doms are visual hets for the super forms - there are no hets for co-doms since they are technically already hets (you either have a pastel or you don't. A if you have a pastel it is a het for super pastel).

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Originally Posted by rabernet

If there is no super form - it's a dom. If there IS a super form - it's a co-dom.

So far, no one has proven a super spider or super pin.

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That is the only difference. :gj: Great post.

thank you jake, that was perfect explanation!

LOL... I tried to sort of explain this in another thread, but essentially the ONLY difference between the snake version of "dominant" is that it does not produce a super form (in other words, the homozygous-two copied, and heterozygou-one copied morphs look the exact same..

Treat it exactly like you would a co-dom, so for example a Pastel:

Pastel = P
Normal = N

PastelxNormal
N N
P PN PN
N NN NN

2=pastel
2=normal

PastelxPastel
P N
P PP PN
N NP NN

1=super pastel
2=pastel
1=Normal

super Pastelxnormal
N N
P PN PN
P PN PN

4=pastel

super Pastelxpastel
P N
P PP PN
P PP PN

2=Super pastel
2=pastel

super Pastelxsuper pastel
P P
P PP PP
P PP PP

4=Super pastel

The pinstripe punnets look the exact same, with one variation... The "PP" or homozygous expression looks the exact same visually as the het "PN/NP" expression.

Pin = P
Normal = N

PinxNormal
N N
P PN PN
N NN NN

2=Normal
2=pinstripe


PinxPin

P N
P PP PN
N NP NN

genetics:
1=Homo Pin (looks like pin)
2=pin
1=Normal
Looks:
3=pin
1=normal

Homozygous pin(looks like pin) x normal
N N
P PN PN
P PN PN

4=pinstripe.

Homozygous pin x Pin
P N
P PP PN
P PP PN

genetics:
2=homo pinstripe
2=pinstripe.
Looks:
4 pins.

Homozygous pin x homo Pin
P P
P PP PP
P PP PP

genetics:
4=homo pin
Looks:
4 pins.