Quote Originally Posted by angllady2 View Post
I'm not sure exactly when it goes from being "dinker" to genetic. Maybe if mom or dad has the trait, offspring have it, and maybe grand-offspring do as well ? That looks silly doesn't it? What i mean is if Sookie has the look, her pastel son has it, and then later when you breed him to a different snake his offspring have it to. Maybe then it's considered genetic?

Gale

I'm kind of going through a similar debate as Sookie right now, and I've pondered this question a bit as well.

IMO if, as Gale suggests, the mama passes the trait down to her babies, and they pass the trait on down to their babies, it's pretty clearly genetic. However, it may not be as "genetic" as we in the BP world like it to be.

By that I mean, some traits are polygenic -- they involve more than one gene, and can be fixed in bloodlines via selective breeding. Most characteristics of domestic animal breeds are polygenic.

There seem to be a few polygenic traits that are clearly recognized in the BP world. For example, some people have really killer, awesome looking pastels. However, those rokken pastels weren't produced because of one single "modifier" gene that makes them look good, and without which the pastel will look lousy. There are a lot of things that go into what makes a "good" pastel, and if you breed two "good" ones together, you're likely to get a variety -- some better than the parents, some as good, some not as good. Breeding the best to the best should continue your bloodline in a positive direction. Those are genetic traits, but they aren't single-gene, simple Mendelian mutations like we're used to.

I think it only goes from "dinker" to "morph" if it's a single gene mutation. It seems we've pretty clearly defined that only simple Mendelian traits count as "morphs." I think, though, if it's a really nice polygenic trait that IS genetic, that still ought to count for something (and ought to take the snake out of the "dinker" category).

Banded seems to be a real head-scratcher, because some genetic banded animals do appear to have one single simple Mendelian mutation that makes them look banded, while others appear to be more polygenic.

In my estimation, if, as in Sookie's case, ALL of the babies out of that parent are banded, it's likely polygenic. Breeding the banded babies to a non-banded individual would (I'm guessing) produce some babies with good banding and some with less banding, while breeding them to one another should produce even more extreme banding. (Again, I'm guessing.)

If, as happened in my breeding, extreme banded x banded = 4 totally normal and one extreme banded babies, my guess would be that it's a single gene.