Posted by:
Rainshadow
at Fri Oct 5 20:54:39 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Rainshadow ]
"Harlequin" is the name of a bloodline,not a "morph" that has a specific look("monotypical expression",mentioned previously)...people seem to forget this,and often speak of "THE Harlequin GENE",and think it only refers to the aberrant/nicely colored examples... the confusion comes from trying to associate what we know about specific "morphs" that all look like we think they should,and applying it to something where even the "normals" also produce results...if I had gotten different results from breeding them,I would've concluded that "normals" were of no genetic importance,and paid less attention to the bloodline,and more on the expressive examples only...(it would've been much easier.) I believe,in this way they are similar to Jungles,at least in terms of lesser,and greater expressive individuals,extreme variation,and a benefit from focus on the bloodline itself rather than only one,or two certain visual criteria...we have not concluded whether a homozygous Harlequin is possible,what it should look like,or if we've already gotten one,and just haven't bred it yet? but the term "selective breeding" is what we did once we were sure we had something genetic...not what we did to create it in the first place.(the original pair were "normal looking" boas)....we don't really know what you get when all the "genes line up" because we were determined not to inbreed it to death,and chose to build a broad foundation of outcrosses prior to doing alot of inbreeding.what backcrossing has been done has produced some fairly remarkable results...so to answer your original question,at least the way I interpret it...Yes,100% of the animals we originally let go of were "Harlequin bloodline animals" they were all F1 offspring from a paring involving one parent that was pure non-hypo Harlequin...at what point of dilution do you quit calling it Harlequin???,I honestly don't know because,quite simply it is the opposite direction of where I'm going with it...I hope this helps.
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HarlequinBoa.com
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Ok... - Rainshadow, Fri Oct 5 20:54:39 2007