Hey Matt

The best analogy I have to explain my stance regarding the black transfer to albinos is normal/hypo to albino/sunglow comparison.

For instance, in a sunglow litter with both albinos and sunglows. The vast majority of the time that there is any question regarding a certain individual, it is settled by looking at the tail. If there are high white borders around the edge of the tail splotches, you can be just about totally certain its an albino. Why is that? Well, compare the black tail splotch bordering in a hypo to that of a normal. The normal has a clear border, the hypo has little to none. It transfers into albinos and sunglows in the same way.

This is also the reason I believe Mark Miller's moonglow is indeed a hypo snow, because it lacks the bordering in the tail splotches which are present in snows.

You can also pick out speckling in albinos, speckling that I believe would have been black specs had the individual not been an albino.

Another contention of mine is the fact that high black het albinos almost always throw low color albinos... or at least albinos that wash way out with age. Although it could be argued that the line suffers from lack of effective selective breeding for color due to the high black (opposite of selective breeding via pastel). But find albinos that are very washed out with very little saddle contrast... then find the hets that they derived from. I would be willing to bet the saddles of those hets will have high degrees of black in them.

There is certainly genetic melanin variation amongst individuals in a litter (whether theyre affected by the albino mutation or not). I think the reason a coral popped out of one of Kahl's early breedings is because a single individual happened to get the long end of the stick in both the areas of color and reduced melanin. So out popped a weak polygenic high colored albino, which has been expanded upon ever since. This is just theory and speculation of course.
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Take Care,

-Ryan Homsey

www.topnotchboas.com

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