Sorry, no paradox Ivory pics.



Paradoxes do display a random anomaly in their pattern, which IS usually random patches of normal color or pattern thrown into the morph phenotype, but we have no way of knowing yet whether it is a genetic trait or not.



It does not appear to be inherited simply, which in geneticist's terms are what almost all of the "proven" BP morphs are. That is to say that these morphs are inherited through mutant alleles of ONE gene. This is what makes it so easy to "prove" the inheritance pattern in a generation or two.



With the comparatively low reproductive rate of BP's, properly testing out the inheritance of the paradox traits through breeding would take a very, very long time. There are many methods for the inheritance of a trait that do not constitute "simple" inheritance. One of the easiest-to-explain methods of a more complex inheritance pattern is through "epistasis." If you Google that term, you will find many good explanations. Other genetic terms of interest may be "pleiotropy" and "penetrance," separately. Normally I would explain these things in line in the thread here, but there are so many good and full explanations of these readily available that I think you will find a satisfactory explanation by looking these up separately.



A little genetic factoid for you: You remember hearing in school that human eye color was inherited simply, with blue eyes being recessive to brown eyes? That has pretty well been disproven. Last you looked at peoples' eyes, how many individual colors can our eyes be? It's a lot more than blue or brown isn't it? The current theory says that human eye color is controlled by a combination of 15 genes, with at least 2 possible alleles at each locus, but there is nothing that says there can't be more than 2 alleles at a given locus! There can easily be 3 or more alleles at any given gene locus.



Happy Herping!!



~Rebecca



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1.0.0 Dumeril's Boa '04

1.3.1 Ball Pythons

[1.0.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]

[0.1.0 '03? 50% PH VPI Axanthic (Marian), PROVEN female]

[0.1.0 '05 Het Orange Hypo (Sylvia)]

[0.1.0 '08 VPI line Axanthic (Jane)]

[0.0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]

0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs: Brandy & Mara)

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