Found this amelanistic Pacific gopher near where I worked in Richmond, CA back in 1987 as a hatchling. This crappy pic was taken some years later. I bred her a couple times and introduced the striped gene into the line before giving my breeders to a friend. He outbred them and really advanced the line. I got a couple hets back and finally bred a striped het amel female to a blotched albino this year. Hatched 7 eggs and decimated the odds by getting 6 albinos with all 7 being striped. Yes the striped gene is dominant in Pacific gophers. As I posted in a thread further below, I have seen no evidence that the stripe gene is co-dominant, just straight dominant.

Along with the ones I have produced over the years, I have caught many stripers from where they occur near where I live in the wild. The degree of striping varies considerably. Some are nearly patternless while others have a complete center stripe. Here are a few hatchlings.



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Rick Staub

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