morphs or hets or normal

[emroul]

Bob clark has lucy "hets" already. They are called Fire Balls. Leucistics are now considered a co-dom trait. Fire balls are the "het" so to speak (just like the pastel is the "het" super pastel). You breed a fire ball to a normal and you get 50% fire balls and 50% normals. You breed two fire ball together and you get 50% fireballs and 50% leucistics. There is another line of leucistics that is recessive until proven otherwise. I personally don't consider it a lucy because it has a faint pattern, but it has blue eyes which is just amazing. You can get more info at bob clark's website (www.bobclark.com).



Jennifer

[Marla]

Jen, I'm actually aware of all that, but as you probably know, three different types of leucistics have been identified and only the fireball type is known for semi-certain publicly what its genotype is. There's some discussion that platty x axanthic or albino x ? may be the path to the other forms of leucistic bp's.

[emroul]

Yup, leucistics will be fun for sure..

[BallKingdom]

Mojaves are so freaking sweet... but at the moment the only morph I want is a real sweet pastel

[RandyRemington]

If fireball is het black eyed leucistic (I think it is very very likely based on the info disclosed so far, however, as the original breeder is adamantly pointing out on kingsnake it isn't yet a 100% sure thing) then fireball X fireball will produce babies that each have a 25% chance of being black eyed leucistic, 50% chance of being fireballs, and 25% chance of being normal. Don't get confused about the morph type (recessive, co-dominant, dominant) we are still talking het X het here so you would not get 50/50 firballs and leucistics. I know it's easy to mess up but I find thinking of the genotype (fireball =? het) helps me keep it straight.

From his web site I see that Vin Russo is using the perhaps more correct term "incomplete dominant" for his blue eyed leucy where what he believes to be the hets he is calling High Yellow Lemons. I think I remember seeing these for sale before he produced the leucy and thinking they where overpriced, darn, wish I could have bought one at twice the price now! I didn't find any pics of his High Yellow Lemons now (maybe I was looking at something else before).

The SnakeKeeper is calling their Ivory codominant. IMHO this might well be closely related to the other yellow stripe type leucistics but just with a little more color. They don't post a picture of give a name for the het form that I can find but I've heard people say that it might be what's called a "yellow belly".

I can't seem to find it right now but I thought I read where Peter Kahl indicated that his leucistic had normal looking babies. I would actually be a little surprised at this point if his wasn't codominant but I have seen very little info on what is going on with that project. Anyone have a link to any published info on what the babies looked like?

I believe that Ralph Davis is indicating that his leucistics might be recessive. Certainly that is a possibility but given that both parents where co-dominant morphs (and a little similar in my eyes) and all the other apparently co-dominant leucistic like balls popping up I'm suspicious that his are co-dominant too.

[Marla]

I remember reading on someone's site -- not sure whose, sorry -- that the author believed that ball python coloring was made up of a layer of white at the base and then layers of black, reddish brown, yellowish brown, and yellow. If this is correct, then it seems to me that there might be a few ways to produce leucistic-appearing animals: promote white to the top layer (black-eyed, I'm guessing), suppress all the other colors (blue-eyed, I'm guessing), incompletely suppress yellow and suppress all others (the faint yellow stripe), promote white and incompletely suppress yellow (faint yellow). If this is correct, then the first two lines ought to be incompatible with one another and the last two, but the last two might be compatible. Rather than being passed as genetic color-coding, it may be passed as lacking an enzyme or half an enzyme pair, which would explain incomplete or co-dominance.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of info and photos available yet on lucy offspring. It'll probably be another 2-5 seasons before we really have the answers to most of the questions we have about these beauties, and possibly longer before line compatibility is established.

[Herpquest]

As the breeder of the Black-eyed leucistic, I will not make any claim as to whether they are a co-dominant or simple recessive gene until I have the results of this year's breeding. The lucy male has been bred to his mother,a Fireball female and four normal females. Bob Clark may well be right in saying that it is co-dominant, but I need to prove the theory beyond doubt. Eric Davies.

[RandyRemington]

Right after I posted this morning I realized that I incorrectly referred to Platy and Phantom as co-dominant. I guess at this point all we know is that they are "some kind of dominant" although I think the will turn out to be co-dominant.

But it brings up a good question, how much proof is enough? Could you ever really be 100% sure? What if they had a recessive gene that just happened to be linked on the same chromosome with a co-dominant gene? You might go a long time without separating the two and proving the effect of the recessive gene as not co-dominant. I guess the big checker will be if the leucy doesn't produce any normals no matter what he is bred to. But how many babies will be enough to be sure?

[Marla]

Eric, thanks for stopping in and contributing to the discussion. I certainly look forward to seeing what you produce with these and what we can learn of the genetics involved.

Randy, you raise a good point. I don't think we can ever be 100% sure without genetic testing and profiling. For our purposes, though, I'd think that if the leucistic produces no normals when it's bred with normals and other morphs, then that will be good enough evidence for me.

[RPlank]

Eric,
We are glad to have you here, and would love to hear more about your breeding projects, if you are willing to share your knowledge and/or tips!