>>There is no way to know for sure how many genes are controlling the phenotype.

Very good work here. I definitely commend you for your effort. Maybe you went on to explain this. I didn't get to read even a tenth of this paper, so maybe you mentioned it elsewhere (so forgive me if I am repeating something that you already stated), but although you may not be certain of the exact amount of genes governing a polygenic appearance, you can, however, use a genetics equation to estimate the minimum number of genes involved.

The equation is n = D^2/8Vg, where n is the number of genes, D is the difference of the means of the two parents, and Vg is the genetic variance of the F2 progeny.

For an organism such as snakes, where getting F2's and calculating their variance would take at least six or seven years, this would be a lengthy genetics project.

Again, maybe you mentioned these things in your paper. You obviously did a lot of homework here, and a paper like this has definitely been needed to explain polygenetics to herpetoculturists. Certainly, people who keep and breed the popular polygenic inherited traits such as Abbott Okeetee corns, Miami phase corns, Blue phase chondros, Red phase bulls, and in my case -- Orange phase subocs, would definitely appreciate the discussion of this topic.

Cheers,

Dusty Rhoads
Suboc.com

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