Super Spider and other stuff....

[elevatethis]

Actually heterozygous is the right word for a pastel and for a spider. Remembering that both have unmatched pairs of genes for their respective mutations (the definition of het) would help you to remember that spider X spider has a chance of producing normals too.

Ok, I just did a quick punnent square, a spider x spider cross would make 75% spiders and 25% normals?

S n
S SS Sn
n Sn nn

Given that, even though there is no "super" manifestation of the spider gene, if you were to somehow figure out which individuals ended up as "SS"(which would be a homozygous spider, right?) as opposed to just "Sn"(a heterozygous spider?), could you breed that individual to a normal and get all heterozygous spiders?

[ddbjdealer]

Well, if someone were to find the homozygous spider, then yes, homozygous spider to normal would yield 100% spiders.

[elevatethis]

I wonder at what point it would be concluded that particular spider was in fact a homozygous spider. Maybe after breeding with many normal females (assuming we had a male of course) and getting nothing but spiders clutch after clutch.

[elevatethis]

ps. this thread is so hijacked....

[jtman]

I understand the dom and co-dom genitcs =) But thanks though. Sometimes a see some pics of young pastels with a lot of bright orange on their sides but I never see an adult with this bright orange. There are just sooo many people offering pastels that its neigh impossible to figure out what one i want. Maybe I'll just stick with my albino plan for now. I just dont know.... tooo many choices!!

JT

[Adam_Wysocki]

I wonder at what point it would be concluded that particular spider was in fact a homozygous spider. Maybe after breeding with many normal females (assuming we had a male of course) and getting nothing but spiders clutch after clutch.

With something as important as claiming that you actually have a super spider, I would think that a breeder would want at least a couple of seasons of multiple all spider clutches. Making the claim prematurely and then popping out a normal in future breedings would be an embarrassment that would be hard to recover from.

-adam

[RandyRemington]

We could tie Pastel back in and say that to test if you have a homozygous (super) pastel OR a homozygous spider you could breed it to normals and see if you produce all morph (either pastel or spider) babies. Technically you could never be absolutely sure you weren’t just very lucky and produced all morphs with a het but the odds against that get longer and longer the more babies you produce. For example, the odds of going 6 for 6 on baby pastels or spiders with a het X normal breeding is only about 1.6% (1:64). The odds of going 10 for 10 is about 0.01% (1:1,024). The odds of 20 in a row is 0.0001% (1:1,048,576). So, if your spider produces 20 spiders and no normals in it's first 20 eggs bred to normals is it "proven" homozygous spider or where you just 1 in 1 million lucky?

[elevatethis]

I guess the point Adam is making is that, would you be willing to risk you reputation on anything less than 100% certainty?

[Adam_Wysocki]

I guess the point Adam is making is that, would you be willing to risk you reputation on anything less than 100% certainty?

Exactly. Especially with all of the conspiracy theory nuts out there and the wackos that will do and say anything to try and discredit the ball python market because of their jealousy.

I would think that walking that extra mile just to be 100% certain is almost a requirement at this point.

-adam

[RandyRemington]

My point is that you can never be 100% certain you have a homozygous spider. Even if one where to produce 30 spiders and no normals bred to normals there would still be a 1 in a billion (actually 1,073,741,824) that it was just good luck. Just like you can never prove 100% that a homozygous spider isn't possible. Even if the first 30 potential homozygous spiders all failed to prove there would still be an about 1 in 191,751 chance that it was just bad luck that all those 33% chance homozygous spiders turned out to just be hets. Of course there would also be the chance that the selection of possible homozygous wasn't random (maybe homozygous ones look or act a little different or for some reason weren’t as likely to be the first ones bred by the public).

So, if you can't be 100% certain, when do you decide enough is enough? I think if there was only a 1 in 1 billion chance of being wrong most of us would consider it proven. Would anyone really feel they need better odds than that JUST to be sure?