I'm speechless right now...

[FireStorm]

But we are not counting the visual pieds...because we can identify them.

[OmNomNom]

But we are not counting the visual pieds...because we can identify them.

Heh, yah, that's what threw me for a bit...."but, but...you can't get 66% from a cross!" I take it then pied is a recessive allele? Or do the hets occasionally have some color to them? And just out of curiosity, do you or why do you not keep things as homozygotes? Seems like it'd be an easier way to maintain a particular trait if you have no other way of knowing for certain who's carrying a copy.

It all makes me very curious, I don't know a lot about ball python genetics but I wonder if anyone's tried mapping out any of the different traits....For example, are there some traits that always seem to segregate together? Are color and "scale pattern" separate traits or if you have a pinstripe is it always yellow or one particular color? Has anyone ever run across any defects associated with any of the morphs? In cats and dogs, white colored fur with blue or heterochromatic eyes has an increased tendency for blindness. Things like that. I r curious.

It's a shame no one's gotten around to sequencing the ball python genome, there's a close species but I don't know if it's annotated yet. Genotyping services are getting cheap enough that it would be fairly cost efficient to just send of a chunk of shed (I'd bet a fresh shed you could get a good amount of quality DNA out of) and figure out if your 66% chance of pied is really pied. Problem is it'd require a bit of foot-work from the breeders in order to figure out which alleles are tied to which trait and if they're the same genes or not or different mutations and what/where they were. Sequencing costs are going way way down every year, but you still have to know where it is your looking. Maybe in 5 years. Le sigh.

[Andybill]

There are certainly defects with certain morphs. The spider has a head wobble; desert females have their infertility.... Any female desert morph is affected by this too... The champ spider is what we call a Lethal morph - it doesnt survive long out of the egg... Sable spider is also one of these... Super cinnies tend to have some defects like duck bills and stuff theres a number of them out there...

[OmNomNom]

There are certainly defects with certain morphs. The spider has a head wobble; desert females have their infertility.... Any female desert morph is affected by this too... The champ spider is what we call a Lethal morph - it doesnt survive long out of the egg... Sable spider is also one of these... Super cinnies tend to have some defects like duck bills and stuff theres a number of them out there...

Interesting! (well, not for the lethals, I'm sure they would probably feel differently about the matter...) But I love seeing things like that...it means you've found something interesting/important! ....now if only we had the genome sequence.

Yes, Pied is a recessive trait. There are "het pied markers" but it's not a sure thing. For example, I'd bet money that the hatchling I just posted pics of above is het Pied. But there are plenty of het Pieds out there that look completely normal.

As for why people work with hets, there are several reasons. When the first Pied was imported from Africa, it was bred to normals (making what the BP community calls 100% hets), since there were no other Pieds available. Then the hets could be bred to the original Pied, or to each other, to produce more Pieds.

The other reason for working with hets involves cost. When I bought my original males, Pieds were still a few thousand dollars, and a pair of 100% hets was over $1000. So I made possible hets, since a single het Pied male was significantly cheaper.

And the reason for lableing these babies as "possible double hets" is so that if they are sold, whoever gets them can try to prove them out if they wish.


Some traits are known to be allelic, for example Butter, Lesser Platinum, and Mojave, or Yellowbelly, Spector, Spark, and Het. Highway.

As for color and pattern mutations, a pinstripe is always one color unless it is combined with another morph, and then the possibilities are endless

Very cool! I didn't realize the ball python community had kept such detailed track of all the morphs and possible alleles (I suppose that's kind of a "well, duh"). I just saw the "genetics calculator" someone has been making. From all that (if someone hasn't already) it should be possible to sit down and map out the different alleles and figure out which ones are the same genes (but different mutations) or genes on the same chromosome. Er....not sure if that would exactly be helpful...but it would be cool!

[FireStorm]

Heh, yah, that's what threw me for a bit...."but, but...you can't get 66% from a cross!" I take it then pied is a recessive allele? Or do the hets occasionally have some color to them? And just out of curiosity, do you or why do you not keep things as homozygotes? Seems like it'd be an easier way to maintain a particular trait if you have no other way of knowing for certain who's carrying a copy.

Yes, Pied is a recessive trait. There are "het pied markers" but it's not a sure thing. For example, I'd bet money that the hatchling I just posted pics of above is het Pied. But there are plenty of het Pieds out there that look completely normal.

As for why people work with hets, there are several reasons. When the first Pied was imported from Africa, it was bred to normals (making what the BP community calls 100% hets), since there were no other Pieds available. Then the hets could be bred to the original Pied, or to each other, to produce more Pieds.

The other reason for working with hets involves cost. When I bought my original males, Pieds were still a few thousand dollars, and a pair of 100% hets was over $1000. So I made possible hets, since a single het Pied male was significantly cheaper.

And the reason for lableing these babies as "possible double hets" is so that if they are sold, whoever gets them can try to prove them out if they wish.

It all makes me very curious, I don't know a lot about ball python genetics but I wonder if anyone's tried mapping out any of the different traits....For example, are there some traits that always seem to segregate together? Are color and "scale pattern" separate traits or if you have a pinstripe is it always yellow or one particular color? Has anyone ever run across any defects associated with any of the morphs? In cats and dogs, white colored fur with blue or heterochromatic eyes has an increased tendency for blindness. Things like that. I r curious.

It's a shame no one's gotten around to sequencing the ball python genome, there's a close species but I don't know if it's annotated yet. Genotyping services are getting cheap enough that it would be fairly cost efficient to just send of a chunk of shed (I'd bet a fresh shed you could get a good amount of quality DNA out of) and figure out if your 66% chance of pied is really pied. Problem is it'd require a bit of foot-work from the breeders in order to figure out which alleles are tied to which trait and if they're the same genes or not or different mutations and what/where they were. Sequencing costs are going way way down every year, but you still have to know where it is your looking. Maybe in 5 years. Le sigh.

Some traits are known to be allelic, for example Butter, Lesser Platinum, and Mojave, or Yellowbelly, Spector, Spark, and Het. Highway.

As for color and pattern mutations, a pinstripe is always one color unless it is combined with another morph, and then the possibilities are endless