I think it tends to confuse people when it is said that there is no such thing as a het pastel. It might be more accurate to say that there is no such thing as a "het FOR pastel". A pastel IS a het. It carries one of the two alleles for the pastel trait. Because it is co-dominant, it is a visual het. The homozygous form is, of course, the super pastel.
If anyone tries to sell you a normal looking snake saying that its a het pastel, or het for pastel, run! Since its co-dominant, if its a het, it shows.
A common misconception in the ball python breeding community is that the word heterozygous only applies to recessive traits. Thats just not true. Genetics is genetics. Hets exist with all genetic traits. Some are visible (co-dom and dom) and some aren't (recessive).
As far as dominant is concerned, spiders may or may not be. Nobody has proven that they have a homozygous spider. If its co-dom, the super either hasn't been produced (unlikely), or the spider gene is lethal in its homozygous form. I think thats also unlikely. If its dominant, then there should be homozygous spiders throwing 100% spider babies. I've heard rumors of that, but haven't seen any evidence. So it could still be lethal in its homozygous form. I'm not sure there are many people breeding spiders to spiders. Most are going for combos.
If the results of breeding a spider gives any non-spiders, then the parent spider isn't homozygous. Its heterozygous: a het.
Steve
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