Great thread minus the emotion. I am very new to ball pythons and genetics so I probably shouldn't even be posting. But post a shall.
I can easily see how can easily a pied can be seen as as recessive becuase I couldn't tell a het if my life depended on it. There are plenty of very sublt inc. Dom morphs that i think many would have considered recessive if discoverd in the bigginnig of ball python breeding. Time of discovery is an important factor with morph identification. Same line of thought as we "knew" the earth was flat until we learned later it was not. As we (as a hobby) work with this breed more, we are developing a better eye for genetics over time.
Perhaps my newbish approach is of value to the discussion because I don't have a very trained eye or a ton of experience. I believe the hobby is constantly developing a better eye for spotting morphs and differences from WT. Use me as an example. First looked at ball pythons a little over a year ago. I couldn't believe people were paying so much for what looked like normal ball pythons to me. I will use yellow belly as an example. I couldn't see the genes influence at all. It just looked normal to me. Sure I could see pastel, spider, clown etc. In one years time I could now identify many more morphs and combination with some confidence. I am seeing things I never saw a year ago. If I was in charge of naming I would have also claimed many of these to be traits recessive when I started, as I saw no visible change in "hets". I would have been prooven incorrect of course.
Now take my experience and apply it to time frame of the hobby. Forgive me I know pieds were discovered a long time ago but I don't know when. The hobby's eyes have seem countless new morphs since and has developed a better eye for subtlety. In my limited understanding, if you can reliably see a difference in a wild type, no matter how subtle, it is still a visible difference and therefore not recessive but incomplete dominant. Going back to older morphs such as pieds it is not far fetched for us to believe we can see details we were unable to see before. Markers are IMO a visible change in appearance from wild type like spot nose or yellow belly. (I realize these aren't super subtle but to someone new they are).
I think this conversation is very interesting and I think it is a disservice to the hobby not to reevaluate how we look at previously defined morphs. If we don't challenge ourselves we inhibit growth.
Disclaimer: the views expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect those of BP.net.
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