Quote Originally Posted by elevatethis
Spiders and pins are thought of as Dominant traits. Remember that while a spider that is, well, visually a spider (no hets because its dominant) most likely is a heterozygous carrier of the gene/allele/whatever. That means that it carries a spider gene/allele paired with a wild-type gene/allele. When you cross that with a normal, that wild-type gene is what causes that theoretical 50/50 split of normals and spiders when a heterzygous spider is crosses with a normal.



From what I know, it's possible that a visual spider can in fact be a homozygous spider. These spiders are created from spider x spider pairings. And since there's no way to tell what a homozygous spider looks like because there's no super form know so far, the only way to tell is to breed that spider over and over and over to normals and generate nothing but spider offspring. I'm not sure if there's a benchmark as far as proving a homozygous spider, but I'd feel like a real tool if I proclaimed to have a homozygous spider due to good odds, then pop out a normal baby here and there.


ps. When one talks about the letters on punnent squares, ex. Nn aa, is the right term for each letter gene, allele, or what? I've got an elementary understanding of how it all works but forgive me if I butchered the right terminology.
That is the way i understood it as well, but a friend was fairly adament (sp?) about it, so I thought I would double check heh.


As far as punnet squares I would say a spider is Ss (lowercase s meaning normal gene on the spider allele?)

So a Bumblebee would be Ss Pp a super pastel woudl be PP a killerbee would be SsPP

At least that is how I do it.

Horizontal line is a visible spider, verticle line is a normal

S s
s Ss ss

s Ss ss

Ss x 2 = visible spiders
ss x 2 = normals

so 50% spiders, 50% normals


Bumblebee punnet square x normal


---sp---Sp---sP---SP
sp sspp Sspp ssPp SsPp
sp sspp Sspp ssPp SsPp
sp sspp Sspp ssPp SsPp
sp sspp Sspp ssPp SsPp


sspp = normal
Sspp = Spider
ssPp = Pastel
SsPp = Bumblebee

25% chance of each