What is the deal with all this 'hidden' stuff?

[daniel1983]

I keep hearing more and more about 'hidden' genes. VPI produced patternless bps from two normal appearing adults, RDR talks of a hidden gene in the platty, the Circus ball from a het clown to normal breeding, Greg Graziani producing some crazy stuff with the pastel and spider het pieds, Yellowbelly stipes, the Crystal ball...... I can understand basic genetics but this stuff is alittle over my head

Do any of us that breed ball pythons have to opportunity to unlock something hidden? I should breed my two normals together and hope of producing something purple with yellow spots......this stuff is crazy....I love ball pythons.

What do you all think of all this 'hidden' stuff? Do you think more of it will start to pop up as more people start breeding ball pythons and more morphs are mixed?

[joepythons]

O yea the possibilitys are endless .You never know what two normal looking ball pythons might be holding in thier gene pools .

[Shelby]

While the odds are extremely slim for you to randomly have two animals het for the same recessive gene.. it has been known to happen. I don't know about the other stuff though.. interesting anyway.

[mr~python]

i hope vanessa and zulu make some crazy babies. LOL, that would be awesome. i'll name it "the marshall ball". hehe.

[RandyRemington]

Two things come to mind as factors to explain it - huge numbers and selective breeding.

The variety of morphs we have to pick from comes from the mining of the wild population to the tune of 150,000 a year. If you could collect that many of most any species you would probably see a lot of variation. Especially a small clutch (so many clutches) species that probably doesn't spend a lot of time above ground during the day to penalize the color and pattern freaks.

With that foundation to pick through for breeding stock some really nice "normals" have been picked out to found an ever-growing captive breeding population. Of course you don't hear so much about the hundreds and hundreds of normal looking babies captive bred every year but again, with numbers, the freaks rise to the top.

Perhaps most importantly you have the captive selection pressure for mutant genes. It sounds like possible het recessive male byproducts of cb morph projects have been sold as normal for some time and there likely are starting to be some females now too. With some hets perhaps looking a little nicer than non-hets it isn't surprising that the percentage of hets in the "normal" cb pool is getting higher.

And what really increases your chances is when you start using known het males. For example, say there is a recessive gene that occurs in 1 in 100 random wild ball pythons. The chance of two 1 in 100 wild hets getting together is 1 in 10,000 to produce 1 in 40,000 homozygous babies. But if you already know your male is a het the chance falls to 1 in 100 of a het pair if the rate is the same as the wild. Now maybe cb selection has boosted the rate of hets among "normals" to 1 in 50. It doesn't take too many hundreds of people working with that gene to pop up a few unexpected homozygous babies.

Now the "hidden" platy gene is another story. RDR no doubt was extra interested in Platy Daddy because he showed the extra gene to make him a platy (not that he probably wouldn't have picked him up had he been only a lesser). The hidden part there is that you don’t seem to see the dilute gene without the lesser gene.

Some of your examples may be due to het effects. It’s looking like some of the “recessive” morphs aren’t always so cut and dry. There is the possibility that the single pied or clown genes enhanced other genes in some of those examples. It sounds like the mom of the Crystal ball didn't stand out too much until enhanced by the mojave gene. As more genes are combined it will be fun to try to understand the interactions.

[elevatethis]

Nice post....that made my brain tingle...

[Adam_Wysocki]

VPI produced patternless bps from two normal appearing adults

There was something about the look of those adults that made Tracy want to put them together. VPI isn't in the habit of breeding "normals" just for the heck of it.

When Colette produced the Ivory, many people thought that it's parents were "normal appearing adults" too. Only some of the "insiders" knew what she had found. Now everyone knows that they were yellow bellies.

When you're around thousands of ball pythons every day you develop an eye for what is normal and what is consistently aberrant. The pros in this business know how to pick out animals that are consistently aberrant and make cool stuff with them. Remember those words ... consistently aberrant, they're important.

One last point ... don't forget that for every morph or wild looking appearance that we've seen over the years there are literally dozens of funky patterned or colored ball pythons that NEVER proved to be genetic. Normal ball pythons are extremely polymorphic which is probably one of the reasons why we see so many different mutations among the species.

-adam

[RandyRemington]

The two biggest disappointments that I've seen posted are labyrinth (VPI and RDR) and Coffee (TSK). Maybe a line with one of these stunning looks will eventually prove but so far it doesn't look like there has been any luck.

[avd88]

So are there still many undiscovered morphs?
Cause its a little frustrating for someone who is just starting on the ball python breeding mania, to know the amount of morphs that have been proven, and the years that we will take to even start breeding expensive morphs, and in the meantime, more and more morphs will be discovered, so what will we be left with...

[daniel1983]

......yep......and tons of possible designer morphs to create too