Tom, thanks for your take on the "special" as the base morph and "crystal" as a combo issue. I find the recent change to using crystal as the base and crystal mojave as the combo a little confusing but apparently it didn't start with you. I guess it could have something to do with what you are calling the super crystal and exactly what is in it though. Based on the reports of crystal X normal producing 50/50 splits of mojave and special this year (info not available until after the super crystal was christened I believe) I've now got to think more than ever that special (whatever it looks like) is an allele of the lesser complex and that the super crystal is actually a homozygous special without mojave. The super crystal looking like it could have mojave would not be all that surprising if special is yet another different mutation of the same gene as mojave (and lesser, butter, Vin Russo, mocha, hidden, phantom ...) But if "super" means homozygous I could see how calling it a super crystal (i.e. homozygous crystal) could result in special being replaced with crystal. Maybe people just think "special" is two generic and Baker would have less people looking for something to replace it with.

Birds are a good model especially when it comes to gender and any sex linked traits we might eventually run into. In both have the zw gender chromosomes instead of the xy in mammals and unlike mammals where the male determines the gender in both snakes and birds it's the female by giving either a z or a w.