Again, wow, just wow. The work to raise up 153 potential homozygous (33% chance) spiders must have been astronomical. Just because I couldn't come up with a theory to explain how there could be no proven homozygous spiders without it being homozygous lethal means nothing compared with the actual numbers. Of course 1,530 would have been better but already you have me trying to come up with new theories. Letting the data push our imaginations might be how we'll figure this one out.

So do I understand right that with the eggs incubating this year all or almost all of the potential homozygous spiders will have produced? The infertile homozygous spider theory would expect about 50 of those not to have been able to produce but if you are well over 100 and closing in on 150 I think we can put that theory to rest.

While testing out the possible homozygous spiders if you happen to have separate results for male spider to normal for spider from female spider to normal for spider I'd be interested if both where around 53% or if male spider to normal female was a lot higher. If spider sperm swim faster or otherwise are advantaged in fertilizing eggs it could explain your 78% spider ratio in the spider X spider clutches even with homozygous spiders somehow not making it (hard to explain the follicular count against that though).

Another wild theory I just came up with is parthenogenesis. Did a lot (like 25) of the male possible homozygous spiders throw very high spider ratios but eventually had just one or two normals disqualify them from the hunt for a proven homozygous? I've long wondered if female ball pythons might regularly produce parthenogenic babies. For this to be happening and disqualifying actual homozygous spiders (because they aren't the father of all the babies) it should be noticed first in known homozygous animals like leucistics and super pastels. Do these regularly produce a few normals and no one talks about it because it's so messy for the market? Problem with this theory is that it doesn’t explain how the expected roughly 25 homozygous spider females failed to prove (unless babies sometimes only get genetic material from dad by the same mechanism I'm proposing they sometimes only get from mom).