Before I start throwing a new "morph" name around, let me give you a little background about these guys. This is a new trait or morph that I'm working with. I'm not even sure if the parents of these guys have produced another Marble.

A little over a year ago, I got a couple of pretty little dark colored fire type hatchlings (clutch mates), from Bobby Pruitt (who I've taunted with many pictures ever since). Both babies were identical and they continued to look very similar up until about 4-5 months of age. They were the typical grey & orange color of juvenile dark fire cresteds.

Here's a photo of them as juvies.


The male turned out to be a typical (but very nicely colored) dark grey and bright orange Fire...


However, upon reaching sexual maturity, the female began to look very different from the male. By the time they were sexable, she looked completely different from her brother or any other Crested Gecko that I've ever seen.

Here's a photo of her as a young adult, taken earlier this year.




While I'm not a big fan of inbreeding, I bred the female Marble to her brother hoping to get more Marbles...thinking that the male might be carrying some kind of recessive gene.

While I've not done enough experimentation to know if the male carries the gene or not, the pair (Marble female and dark Fire male) have now produced quite a number of babies this year and some of the babies are indeed Marbles.

Here's one of the first ones I produced. This particular juvie is only a few months old and already showing more color than mom did at that age.


Here's another baby. This one is only two months old and is already developing a lot of orange...even more than the one above. As it gets older, the orange on its sides will become just as intense as the orange on its back...completing the "Marble" look.



Just FYI, I began calling the female "Marbled" quite a while back, but I've recently seen unrelated animals with similar (but not quite the same) patterns also being referred to as Marbles. I'm not sure who came up with the Marble name first and I really don't care, but I will say that the ones I have are definitely different from any others I've seen. As of right now, none of mine have been sold to the general public...only a couple of my closest friends have gotten babies from me.

The defining characteristics of my Marbles are hard to put into words, but I'll do my best to describe what I've observed so far. Marbles start off as dark babies with an orange dorsal pattern...a Fire morph, basically. As they get older, like most Fires, they begin to develop orange on their sides...but unlike a Fire, the orange on their sides connects to the orange on their backs and over time, gets just as intensel. Likewise, the remaining black pattern on their sides also connects to the black pattern on their backs. Other characteristics include a small number of relatively large dalmatian spots and the fact that they're completely lacking of any white markings. They have no white fringe on the legs, no white dots on the sides, etc. The only white on them is their cloacal spurs.

Oviously, it's still early in the development stages, but from what I've been able to gather, this morph looks to be something new...a random trait, as opposed to a combination of two existing morphs. That, to me, is very exciting.

Anyway, I hope some of you are half as excited about them as I am...and I really hope that someone enjoyed the long story behind them.

Thanks,
Anthony

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Anthony Caponetto
www.ACreptiles.com

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