All salmons are hypos, but not all hypos are salmons. Orangetail is a hypo that may or may not be salmon. Pastel is a line selected to be light colored. There are some other hypos that are not salmons. But it's pretty common to say hypo when meaning salmon.

The salmon gene is often called a codominant mutant gene, but in my opinion it's better to call salmon a dominant mutant gene.

Ideally, the salmon gene would be a codominant mutant gene if everyone could separate snakes with one salmon gene from snakes with two salmon genes all of the time. The salmon gene would be a dominant mutant gene if nobody could separate snakes with one salmon gene from snakes with two salmon genes.

Posters on this forum say the two types can be separated sometimes. There is enough overlap in appearance that the two types often cannot be distinguished. That puts salmon in the gray area between the two ideal definitions. (Hey, Mother Nature can be sloppy.) When that happens, I opt for calling it a dominant mutant gene.

Paul Hollander

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