Pairing BEL with Banana glow..

[paulh]

I want to interject one caveat to your final statement, a lesser/mojave BEL is still technically a "het lesser" and "het mojave" animal, but since the genes are allelic, it is still a homozygous BEL ball python, in that on the allele that controls the leucism of the animal there is no longer a "normal" gene. A lesser/mojave BEL animal therefore, as we know, can only pass on either the lesser or mojave gene to it's offspring.

IMO, het lesser and het mojave makes it sound like two independent gene pairs, one made up of a lesser gene and a normal gene and the second made up of a mojave gene and a normal gene. Either lesser/mojave or het lesser/mojave sweems acceptable to me. Best of all is "a gene pair made up of a lesser gene and a mojave gene."

Please reread the definitions of homozygous and heterozygous in my earlier post. Whether a normal gene is present is irrelevant. All that matters is whether the two genes in the gene pair are the same or different.

Part of the quote reads, "A lesser/mojave BEL animal therefore, as we know, can only pass on either the lesser or mojave gene to it's offspring." That is true. A lesser/mojave ball python produces two different types of sperm (or eggs). One type has a mojave gene and the other type has a lesser gene. A het albino ball python also produces two different types of sperm (or eggs). One type has a normal gene and the other type has an albino gene. A homozygous albino ball python only produces one type of sperm (or egg). All have an albino gene. The number of types of sperm (or eggs) tells us whether a gene pair is homozygous or heterozygous. So a lesser/mojave ball python has a heterozygous gene pair.

So in a sense any BEL complex gene, whether it be lesser, mojave, or what ever else, is technically just het leucistic. But since we know of more than one leucism complex gene, they were all named individually.

So a gene pair made up of two Russo genes or two mojave genes is het leucistic? This does not compute.