Is there a way to tell het pied on appearance?

[RandyRemington]

To me, if the marker was a product of the allele then there should be a 1:1 correlation which we do not have. However, if it is a case of linkage from inadvertent selective breeding that explains why you still get the 100% hets who look normal.

We seem to have several examples of sporadic traits that give every indication of being part of the mutations we are breeding for. I don't know what controls when they get expressed and when they don't.

1. The wobble in spiders. If it wasn't a side effect of the actual spider mutation surely the linkage would be broken with all the spider outbreeding by now and someone would be selling a line of guaranteed 100% non looping spiders.

2. Kinking in caramels. Although recessive there has also been a lot of work on outbreeding but still many caramels kink but not 100% of them.

3. Kinking and duck bill in homozygous cinnamon/black pastel. Same thing, seen consistently but not always.

4. Some but not all het granite Burmese pythons with the puzzle pattern that is intermediate between normal and granite.

5. Some but not all het green Burmese pythons with the cinnamon pattern/color that is intermediate between normal and green.

These non absolutes aren't neat and tidy but they seem to be real even though they are seen sporadically. To me the wide white belly with dark lines at the edge and intricate and bright back pattern seen in many but not all het pieds looks a lot like the start of the pied white creeping up from the belly and the dark lines and bright color seen in the non white areas of a homozygous pied. Maybe being homozygous pied and to a lesser degree het pied resists the migration of color from the neural crest down leaving the white belly and in a homozygous pied also white some places on the back. Just like homozygous pieds vary in how restricted the color is (i.e. how high the white is) perhaps the hets can vary too due to other genetics, chance, or perhaps even incubation environment.