Quote Originally Posted by paulh View Post
Number of normal babies and number of spider babies from each clutch. Number of eggs and number of slugs would be nice to have, too.

We know that spiders tend to wobble. Does the spider gene also make a spider embryo less fit to survive to hatching, compared to a normal?

Probability theory says to expect 100 normals and 100 spiders out of 200 eggs from spider x normal matings. What if there are 80 spiders and 120 normals? Or 120 spiders and 80 normals? Or some other difference from expected? A Chi-square statistical test will tell whether the difference seems to mean something.

If the number of spider hatchlings is significantly less than the number of normals, it would support the belief that a ball python with a pair of spider genes is likely to die before hatching.
I get what you are getting at now. Well I think the fact that we have many less severe wobble morphs, when combined with spider turn into lethal or train-wreak might add to that. I mean as far as heterozygous forms go, spider seems to be the worst wobbler. based on that alone it would be reasonable to assume it would see the worst lethality of them all, then maybe, just maybe, it is so bad that it doesn't even develop fully most of the time....