I think most people are confused because they have no idea how genetics works. Here is a basic overview.
Each snake is either normal or expressing a certain trait (is a morph). Each snake carries 2 genes for each trait. Because there are 2 genes you can have 3 possible states.
Normal + Normal (lets call this NN from now on)
Normal + Morph (NM)
Morph + Morph (MM)
The problem is that you either see the trait or you don't, so how do you know which of the 3 above states your snake is. Well that depends. You have three kinds of traits, Dominant, Codominant, and recessive.
With Dominant if you see the trait you know your snake is either NM or MM if you don't see the trait your snake is NN.
With recessive if you see the trait your snake is MM if you don't its NM or NN.
Codominant breaks all the rules. Like your Pastel. If you don't see the trait the snake is NN, if you see the trait your snake is NM and if you see the superform its MM.
So if you get that then there are three other things you need to understand.
If an animal is sold as homozygous for a dominant trait then the seller is saying that they know the snake is MM because they know the parents genetics.
If a snake is sold as het for something. Then the seller is selling an animal that is NM but because its a recessive trait you can't see that the animal is anything but normal.
If a snake is sold as 66% Het for something, then the seller is saying that the bred two het animals together. They got a clutch and a bunch of normals. They are selling you a normal looking snake and there is a 66% chance that the animal is het for whatever they are selling it as het for. This is because if you breed a NM to a NM then 25% of your snakes are NN, 50% NM and 25% MM. unfortunately there is no way to tell the NN from the NM so 75% of the babies are a mystery. So if we take out the MM and do some math we get 33% are NN, and 66% are NM.
Assuming you are still with me you can figure the rest out with punnett squares. Look that up and you are all set.
In the case of your pastel and spider, you have to apply all the above for two different traits.
So you have one snake that has NM for pastel and NN for spider. And one with NN for pastel and NM for spider (assuming this but people can fight about it further in the thread).
That means that when you breed them together you get
25% Normals
25% Pastels
25% Spiders
25% Bumblebees (both Pastel and Spider)
Heres how you do the math, you figure out the chances for each trait seperatedly. So 50% of the babiess will be Pastel and 50% will be Spiders. To find the chances of Bumblebees you mulitply, so 1/2 times 1/2 is 1/4 or 25%. So 50% are pastels but 50% of those are also Spider.
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