If the snake is heterozygous for a trait where both alleles produce a product then the heterozyogte will be intermediate between the two homozygotes. So if there was a trait that made snakes solid red and another allele at the same locus that made the snakes solid white, theoretically the heterozygote would be pink. So in this case (an incompletely dominant allele) you could recognize a het.



However, if one of the alleles is recessive to the other, such as occurs in amelanistic snakes, then the het would look like the homozygous normal snake and would be indistinguishable. So homozygous normal snakes would look normal, hets would look the same. Homozygous recessive individuals would be amelanistic.



So, in other words, the appearance of the heterozygotes depends on the nature of the inheritance pattern of the allele.
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Chris Harrison

[ Hide Replies ]

• Hets - snake_gal, Mon Apr 11 18:39:03 2005
• That depends.... - chrish, Mon Apr 11 19:26:41 2005
• RE: Hets - Dogbert0051, Mon Apr 11 19:31:41 2005
• RE: Hets - duffy, Mon Apr 11 20:43:57 2005