Specter Genes

[tjohn310]

Does any person know the direct characteristics of a specter morph or have a specter?

[bcr229]

Here is my girl, the picture is about a year old. Specter is a very subtle morph and you really have to trust the seller if you can't pick them out. She was paired with a citrus pastel ivory earlier this year, fingers crossed she's gravid now since she's off food and getting huge.

[Pythonfriend]

i looked at a lot of belly pictures of yellowbelly and specter. i think you need to be good at identifying yellowbellys by looking at their belly, and then the belly-pattern is somewhere halfway between a normal and a yellowbelly.

i think the best is still when you can really trust the seller, or when you know its from a super specter or something like that, some pairings make it more obvious.

[tjohn310]

I am trying to figure out if my breeder female could be a specter, do most specters have a nice dorsal stripe that rarely connects to the aliens( of course not a complete stripe) and a brighter pattern?

[bcr229]

Post a picture of her. Also, how long have you had her and what was she sold as?

[tjohn310]

The father is the normal spider the mother is on the green (notice the dorsal striping). The buckets of hatchlings are theirs from last year and notice the two brighter ones as well as the striped spiders. There are two other links to WoBP one is of the specter morph and one is of the specter spider. http://s1330.photobucket.com/user/tj...?sort=3&page=1
Specter Spider
http://www.worldofballpythons.com/mo...pecter-spider/
Specter
http://www.worldofballpythons.com/morphs/specter/

[Pythonfriend]

i followed the links and did not see any belly shots. i mean, i could hack the HTML and post hotlinks of the pictures for all of us to see, but without belly pictures its pointless.

to make this identification, you need belly pictures, and they need to cover the lower half of the BP, and especially the lower third, basically you just need to see all of the belly with emphasis on the last third, but the rest for comparison as well. otherwise this identification is impossible.

you want to identify specters? here is how: look at the belly, study it. any and all pictures that do not show the belly with good lighting and resolution do not help.

[tjohn310]

http://s1330.photobucket.com/user/tj...?sort=3&page=1
Let me know if you need better pictures Pythonfriend, sorry for not including them in the first batch. What exactly are we looking for on the belly?

[Pythonfriend]

oh, thanks, now these pictures are helpful

unfortunately i dont think its a specter.

www.ms-reptilien.de is helpful, this german breeder includes really good belly pictures (take from below a glass table) with all his BPs.

eventually these links will go dead as the BPs are sold, but here is a fire YB:



another one, this time regular yellowbelly:


do you see how the pattern completely tweaks out near the belly? it pixelates, its getting very busy, its random. also the belly has some darkness, especially in the lower third. now with specters you dont get the "yellow belly", the belly can be white, but you will get that pixelation of the pattern near the belly, to a lesser degree.

a specter:

another specter:



now your BP has some randomness in the belly, but not enough of it. its mostly connected to the pattern, and near the tail it even has some railroad tracks. im not 100% sure, but i would expect to see more randomness, especially the nice railroad tracks dont make sense if it would be a specter.

your BP:


i hope this helps