y are these Black eyed Leucistics not all white?

[Serpent_Nirvana]

Trying to say that all of the balls that create BEL's are the same complex. If they were then they would all make the same looking snake no matter what they were bred to. Sorry but IMO a Phantom is not a BEL.

You're right. A phantom is positively NOT a blue-eyed leucistic.

However, breeding trials do strongly suggest that all of the alleles we are talking about (the "phantom" allele, the "lesser" allele, the "mocha" allele, etc.) are on the same locus. It certain isn't proven, but statistics are reeeeeeally starting to point in that direction.

I agree that the term "BEL complex" is a misnomer since more than half of the "super" forms aren't actually leucistics, but that doesn't mean that they can't be on the same locus that does produce leucistics.

Not all alleles on a given locus have to have the same phenotypic expression. In fact, if they did have the same phenotypic expression, we'd never know they were different without genetic analysis.

(Also, I do agree that the expression of homozygous phantom as "super phantom" versus BEL could easily be due to the effect of an epistatic modifier gene -- or two, or more -- on a different allele.)