i have a predisposition to never want any spiders or morphs

[kxr]

Then you can spearhead this project but I don't see many jumping at the chance. Gregor Mendel was in fact a scientist and was incredibly detailed in his notes, not what you see in the hobby. In general genetic complexities are lost in the ball python hobby. For example when you say the cinnamon gene this is not accurate as it is actually the combination of a number of genes that code for color and pattern among other things. The lethal argument is absolutely complex. Some say the embryos never develop at all but I seen a counts, with pictures, of pretty well developed embryos that failed to survive out of the egg. Then there is the alleged all white snake that did not survive. What is due to normal birth defects and what is due to the spider gene is by no means straight forward. There is even a chance that a super spider embryo is just not able to survive the accepted hobby hatching techniques. Not entirely lethal just not likely to thrive.

I'm sorry but seven thirty is right. I'm no geneticist but I do (pretty much) have a bsc in biology and I've taken my fair share of genetics courses. No if and no buts about it genetically the super spider has to exist. It must be possible that in some instances two alleles reside on the spider locus. This therefore means that either

A. In twenty years of breeding there has been no super spiders produced due to astronomically bad luck (highly unlikely)

B. Super spiders appear to be the same as spiders visually thus making spider a dominant trait and by chance no one has ever bred one of these animals or at least it has never been documented (this is possible but still highly unlikely)

C. Super spiders are lethal, it is possible that they fail very early on and the female simply reabsorbs the embryo, if that is the case you would never get to see these failed super spiders or high slug ratios, I suspect the clutch sizes would in general be smaller but I'm not sure if that's the case

Also I'm not sure who told you cinnamon was a combination of genes. I imagine you inferred this based on what it does in the animal but this is simply incorrect. It IS a single gene, the visual phenotypic expression of the gene is a result of the effect that gene has on the transcription of RNA, essentially proteins within the animal. These proteins CAN have multiple functions within the animal and that is POSSIBLY why you may see both a pattern and colour difference but this does not have to be the case.

Genes do not work in this manner, it is not as simple as saying gene A codes for pattern X and gene B codes for colour Y it is entirely possible that gene C codes for pattern X and colour Y.

Let me know if anything I said was confusing, I'll try to clarify


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