Although every year a public proven homozygous spider is more conspicuous by it's absence we shouldn't forget that it still might happen. Maybe it's just been missed so far in all the interest over spider combos etc.



However, give how difficult it will be to prove IF spider is homozygous lethal we are left to speculate with the small amount of evidence available. Maybe with any new mutation you should start out assuming it's lethal and build a case for evidence proving it's not. Either way there isn't a lot of evidence here.



1. I believe one of the big spider producers once posted that they had NOT noticed any higher rate of non hatching eggs in spider X spider clutches.



2. I heard from another breeder who tried spider X spider last year and did report a few undersized eggs that didn't hatch.



3. There was a report several years back that a homozygous spider had even been proven but was being kept secret.



It’s hard to know what to make of these isolated points. Could a lethal genotype cause the embryo to die before even getting shelled or cause the egg not to reach full size? Could the homozygous spider be viable (i.e. not lethal at all) but in some way not presentable or being kept under wraps for some other reason (maybe it's awesome and there are marketing angles)?

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