I understand what you are saying about the linkage and I think that may be happening in some lines. I’ve been told that het Jolliff tend to be reduced pattern, is it really the Jolliff gene or a very close by gene? Then again given Corey Wood’s line of blackback axanthics maybe axanthic and pattern could perhaps in some cases be controlled by the same gene.



However, with the Burmese python examples the visible hets are exactly what I would expect half way between normal and the morph to look like. Even with the piebald ball python thing I can see how the alleged marker is like the beginning of pied with the white starting to creep up from the belly. Check out this ringer I hatched this year that also shows the marker belly. The black stripes at the two edge of the belly might correspond with the two black stripes on the "normal" areas on a pied between where the white comes up from their belly. The edges of this ring even have the bright yellow and waffley black seen around the edges of the pigmented areas on pieds. I’m sure there are some ringers that have nothing to do with pied but I’m wondering if sometimes it can also be a marker.



At least with the burms I'm thinking that the actual het gene is sometimes having a partial effect of the morph and sometimes it's completely recessive. Is this due to different alleles of the normal gene at this location, some that aren't as dominant as others? Could it be due to different developmental conditions or effects of completely different genes allowing the single morphs gene to partially express?

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