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RE: moonglow beardie?

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Posted by: PHLdyPayne at Fri Mar 13 17:41:51 2009   [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by PHLdyPayne ]  
   

I googled it and found a picture of what looks like a dragon with no dark pigment (ie lacking melanin..but eyes were normal) so probably a nice looking hypoamelanistic dragon. It certainly had all kinds of 'white' in it as well.

Morphs generally mean two different things the way I see it. Traits and genetic mutations.

Traits would be breeding for non genetically specific 'things', such as big size, with the theory, breed a big male to a big female, you are likely to get big offspring. The German Giants are a good sample of breeding for traits. The reason this line is called German Giants is they were developed by a German breeder who's goal was to make the biggest and most robust bearded dragon he can. Since then other breeders all over the world have breed them with other morphs to add color and interest to the German Giants (they all looked normal colored and patterned before, just bigger than a typical normal)

Genetic mutations are your albinos, hypotranslucents, Chris Allen Reds, etc. How these works is the morph is genetically carried. Often the animals are line bred (breeding parent to offspring, sibling to sibling, etc.) to isolate the genetic mutation so most if not all offspring look like the desired result.

Of course too much extensive line breeding can greatly increase the chances of harmful and unwanted mutations to crop up, so its always best practice to 'out breed' them to unrelated stock, then use the 'carriers' to breed into other 'carriers' to keep the genepool pure without losing the desired trait.

Genetic traits can be simple recessive, (need to have both alleles (one from each parent) carrying the mutation for it to be visible in the animal), dominant (only need one for the morph to be visual and it overrides recessive traits if paired up. When both alleles are the same, the animal won't look any different than it does with just one alleles having that dominant trait), or co-dominant. (much like dominant, but if both alleles carry the co-dominant trait, it looks different than a typical 'normal' looking animal or an animal who only carries one of the co-dominant alleles).


Bearded dragon genetic mutations are mostly recessive with some co-dominant morphs as well, I am not sure.

Now, for the information about the moonglows that gal told you...she doesn't understand how genetics work. Heterozygous basically means the alleles pairs are not identical. Herpers just shorten this word to 'het' to make it easier. Depending on the the type of genetic mutation, a 'het' can be visible (if dominant or co-dominant) or look exactly like any other wild type/normal animal, but just carries the recessive gene paired with a dominant (normal) gene.

To breed a het with another het..if they are het for a recessive trait, the offspring will only have a 25% chance to look like the recessive trait, all others will look normal, but each normal looking animal will have a 66% chance to be 'het' for the same trait.

Bearded dragons are a bit more complex though when it comes to color and pattern. Some are obviously recessive in nature, proven due to breeding, others act differently which isn't so easy to prove via breeding. How each genetic mutation works, I will let the big breeders who have been spending decades perfecting their lines explain it.

Back to 'Moonglows' it is possible they are a genetic mutation but never caught on, thus just are not bred for the trait anymore or very little. Or it could have been renamed and the new name stuck better, or it was never a true genetic mutation and offspring never developed the same appearance. Without finding the original breeder there probably isn't any way to find out if this morph still exists...I think it probably is more like a nice pastel or hypoalmanistic line somebody tried to sell off under a new name, or just wasn't popular and they mixed it with other things or went out of business.
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PHLdyPayne


   

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<< Previous Message:  moonglow beardie? - hissenia, Thu Mar 12 14:11:37 2009