Posted by:
RandyRemington
at Thu Mar 11 20:59:33 2004 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by RandyRemington ]
Dominant Spot in Syrian Hamsters appears to be a lethal (actually co-dominant) gene. I suppose it took a while to figure this out (or at least a few generations, a lot quicker with hamsters than ball pythons) but from what I read it sounds like the evidence was that no one ever proved a homozygous dominant spot and dominant spot X dominant spot litters tended to only average 3/4 size.
I'm not sure if the clutch size analysis would work in ball pythons as it's harder to predict an average size (I use the pre-lay weight in grams divided by 330) and without knowing a lot more about the egg creation process and when the embryo might die I'm not sure if the number would be effected anyway. Unless it works out that the homozygous matchups make it as far as eggs that can be counted to see if spider X spider consistently have about 1/4 more unhatched eggs it will have to be "proved" by the weight of never proving one homozygous spider over a long period of time. But as someone pointed out, you can't ever be 100% sure of proving something by it’s absence so at some point you just have to decide that there is enough evidence to call it one way or the other.
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Lethal Syrian Hamster Mutation - RandyRemington, Thu Mar 11 20:59:33 2004