breeding het ghosts

[s6g2p]

I have a question can you breed a 100% het yellow ghost to a 100% het orange ghost without problems because of the yellow---orange difference?????

[Marla]

You'll end up with possible double-het ghosts, but sure you can breed them together.

[s6g2p]

so if i breed my 100%het ghost male to a pastel female they would all be pastels but with a 50% het ghost gene ???????scott

[Marla]

No, they'd be all pastels if she's a super pastel. Otherwise you have 50-50 odds of each offspring being pastel and should, theoretically, end up about half and half on the pastel. Similarly, half of the offspring should theoretically carry the ghost gene, but you won't know which they are, and yes, that would make them 50% possible het ghosts.

[RandyRemington]

Actually I've yet to hear from anyone who has crossed proven genetic lines of ghosts and found them incompatible. Maybe I'm just not getting answers from the right people but the few cases of incompatibility I have heard of so far seem to all involve at least one unproven import. My theory is that some imported "ghosts" are caused by something other than genetics. It's also probably true that not many crosses between different lines have been done due to fear of incompatibility so certainly I can't guarantee that crossing a het yellow ghost to a het orange ghost can produce ghosts but I'm not sure that anyone can guarantee it can't either.

[hhw]

I am pretty certain they would not produce ghosts, as they would almost certainly be different genes so the offspring would not be homozygous for either gene. However, you can definitely breed them. You'll just end up with offspring that are 50% het for yellow ghost and 50% het for orange ghost. You can then try breeding these offspring together. You would get a different combination of hets, yellow ghosts, and orange ghosts if you hit the right combination. As for a snake being both yellow ghost and orange ghost at the same time, I'm not sure what the result would be. The offspring might just look like ghosts with varying degrees of yellow or orange. However, there's always the chance that the genes will cancel certain colours in each other out, in which case you might get a new and different look. Either way though, the probably of hitting the right combination for offspring that are both yellow and orange offspring would be low, and since you don't know if it will just look like a yellow or orange ghost or something else altogether, you'll have no idea what to look for to know if you were successful. So, it would probably take several breedings with several offspring of multiple generations to see any results. Of course, if you really do produce something new and different looking, you'll not only have some extremely valuable offspring but you'll have a new morph/line named after you!!! Heck, either yellow or orange ghosts already fetch some good money. Either way though, you'll have to do a lot of inbreeding...

As for breeding a 100% het ghost male to a pastel female, half of the offspring will be pastel and half will not be. Half of the pastels will be het for ghost and 50% of the normal looking offspring will be het for ghost as well.

[Marla]

As for breeding a 100% het ghost male to a pastel female, half of the offspring will be pastel and half will not be. Half of the pastels will be het for ghost and 50% of the normal looking offspring will be het for ghost as well.

Just to clarify, that's statistical likelihood, not remotely guaranteed. Each offspring has a 50% chance of carrying one pastel gene and a 50% chance of carrying one ghost gene. This will produce half and half over a statistically significant population, but not necessarily in small populations (in English: a thousand snake pairs like this will almost certainly give you about half of each, but one pair may throw all pastels, no pastels, all het ghosts or no het ghosts).

[RandyRemington]

I did hear 2nd hand info somewhere that someone (NERD?) had made at least one cross between two ghost "colors" and produced ghosts. It may well have been orange and yellow.

Hey, if I hit the lotto I'll by a pair of every kind of ghost and systematically cross them and publish the results in a few years and then we'll know

Seriously, I really am leaning toward them being compatible. I see two possible explanations for the different colored lines apart from incompatible ghost genes.

1. All ghosts may have the exact same ghost mutation and the different colors in the different lines may be due to other genes in those lines. Some normals are more orange, and some more yellow, and some more green and the same genes that color the normals may be coloring the ghosts.

2. There may be several different variations of the ghost mutation but they are all mutations of the same gene (alleles) and hence compatible. In this scenario the different ghost mutations actually cause the different colors.

I'm leaning more toward #1 as I wouldn't automatically expect that a mutation that reduces black pigment would increase yellow, orange, or green, but what do I know. And of course they could well be incompatible I just have yet to hear of a case of incompatibility between proven lines.

[Marla]

I'm looking forward to the results of your research, and will happily provide some room for extra breeding space.

[s6g2p]

well i guess my question has been anwsered now i will have to see what they do and go from there thanks 8)