Well here's what I know,

1. These are widely called IMGs (Increasing Melanin Gene)but in fact are something else entirely. A true IMG would see an ever increasing amount of black acruing within the animal, creating a darker and darker appearance.

2. What most likely is happening is something that involves the brown and yellow pigments, leaving only concentrations of the silver through charcoal as well as pure melanin. This is the first that I have heard of this happening to a "morph" as usually it is just a normal that one day does the presto change o.

As far as this occurrence being genetic, every appearance change is indeed genetic, but depends on the environment in order for phenotypic (visual look)expression to take place, whether this is from diet, stress, or warmer temps, who knows.

What people usually mean when they say it "isn't genetic" as in jungles, labyrinths, etc is that it is either multiple traits that are hard to reproduce again into one animal, or that it is NON INHERITABLE.

Hope this helps, and please post some pics back, I'd love to see what it does to the spider "look".

Thanks,
Dan

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