What are Pieds? (Jinx)

[Royal Hijinx]

Bunnykit - that was a very long post, and all I really got out of it was that you want to use another term that is not part of genetic lingo (at least that I have heard), which really in not needed, as we have terms to describe what is happening.

No one is denying that other genes play a part. Your argument would be more true for the Pied if it only affected certain morphs with its visibility. It affects all morph and normals. Just as a inc-dom should. The degree of this effect is variable as it is with all subtle morphs. People keep bringing up no so subtle morphs like Spider, Mojave etc... when it is the subtle that should be compared, like Specter.

(side note: Spider is still not technically proven dominant)

This does not apply to what we still believe may be true recessive like Albino. You can pile on as few or as many genes as you like (the oddball ones that color up different as outliers) and still not see that the het Albino is carrying anything else. This is just not the case for het Pied and really so far for het Clown.

Now, if one were to ask the question "Are some morphs more inherently unstable and easily affected by other morphs" the answer to that is "yes", but really that does not apply here since het Pied seems to visually affect most everything.

Let us talk about markers for a moment. The key to a subtle mutation is that while you may not be able to pinpoint EXACTLY what is off (as far as ID of the morph) but you surely be able to see the SOMETHING is different from the normal appearance. IF you can SEE this difference in the heterozygous form, the mutation is NOT recessive. Sometimes polygenetic variability will do a good job of masking the subtlety, but it is still there. This goes back to the idea of 100% ID of het Pieds out of a random pool of say 100 snakes. What I would say is that they may not be immediately ID'd as het Pied, but they are more likely to at least be ID'd as DIFFERENT. I submit that if you put two Specters in a tub with 100 normals, not tell anyone what morph is in there and how many, the success rate of someone saying I found two Specters would be low, with the rate of saying they found two "different" snakes higher. And depending on the variability among the normals some folks would not find any anomalies. So in this case markers may or may not help, but does not really change the fact that (in this case) Specter is a visible inc-dom mutation, and the markers (however subtle) ARE there. The results for het Pied in the same scenario would likely be similar.

Look, it would be beyond awesome if we could map genomes and do a ton of truly scientific experiments to see what is happening, but no one is paying for that to happen.

What we do have is a combination of experience with the animals as well as personal education and reasoning capability. Between myself, Brant and Travis we have over 20 years of college and graduate level education in varying fields. And with Travis' actually being in genetics, that is a bonus. You may say "so what" and that is fine, but what is shows is that there are groups of folks who have learned over the years how to examine and formulate opinions based on the available information.

The available information at this point does not support the Pied mutation as being Simple Recessive, and does better support it being incomplete dominant.