Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The leopard gene has been labelled as recessive. I was just looking over some pics of leopard hets., and it is aparrent that many of these hets. have obvious aberrancies. I do not know the ratio of babies born from het. X het. or het. X leopard breedings, but is it possible that the leopard gene is actually acting in a dominant fashion, with the actual leopards being the super form of the trait? I realize that not all leopard het's have the great aberrancies, so maybe incomplete dominance? Look at albino hets. You very rarely see albino hets. with crazy patterns. It occurs at the same occurrance as normal Colombian breedings. The leopard hats. are a whole new game. There are way too many hets., with aberrancies. Just a thought. Feel free to laugh at me know and say I have been shunned to the leopard gecko forum. I thought I would do more than just post pics. Maybe I should stick with that.

Phil Goss

I too have seen the very abberant Hets, but it seems like most of those are from Euro bloodlines, I have been told that the Sonorans Deserts over there look very different from the ones over here, I would venture to say that those hets will look different than the ones produced over here, not to say that abberant ones won't be produced, I have seen some Sonoran Deserts crossed with columbians for example show very different patterning...I think when bred to columbians, in the case of the Het Albinos, the babies will come out looking different...I am not sure if its co-dom or incomplete or what, I would say they are recessive but just the babies might have a different pattern to them than a Sonoran Desert...Who knows...it is interesting thought...Whats interesting is when you breed two Leopards together the normal looking hets look nothing like the sonorans we have here...I am guessing thats what the Sonorans over there look like, it would be interesting to see what some look like that are from over there...

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Amanda Kingsbury & David Kendrick
www.executivereptiles.com

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sig file edited by admin 3/6/06

When you breed 2 Leopards together you will get all Leopards and no hets, did you mean when breeding Leopard x Het?

served as a basis for choosing a baby from a group of 66% hets. I personally picked out my female 66% het because she has solid color eyes (all Leopards have solid colored eyes), and abberant pattern.

It however is not true that ALL Leopard hets are abberant. I looked through a LOT of them in Daytona that Hans had with him, after I had bought my Leopard. Some I liked more than Leopards, others were as normal as can be. Hans (obviously the most experienced with Leopards and hets) said that there is no conclusive evidence to the claim although many have made the observation.

Also, did you see the Leopard X High Contrast Albino Double hets that the Burkes produced last year?
Some of them had CRAZY abberancies, others were as normal as possible. (It should be noted that this is the only Kahl Albino X Winner Leopard breeding done to date, released to the public.)

Here is a Picture of my 66% het, and of my Leopard. Also Rentfro line Sonorans, a normal and a Hypo, siblings(U.S. bloodline). Linda Hedgpeth now owns the Hypo and Michael Beach owns the normal.

I did not state that ALL leopard hets. are aberrant.

Phil Goss

just emphasizeing the point for other readers.

Thanks

I've only been working with leopards a short while, but have been a fan of them for some time. I have seen these pattern anomalies not only in boas, but in ball pythons as well. A normal ball het for pied for example, to me don't show too much expression of an underlying recessive gene, however, these pics of some balls I'm linking to below, clearly show pattern that is definitely not normal for that appearance.
Both are co-dom and dom balls, a spider and a pastel, both are het for piebald. Any one who knows what a spider normally looks like or a pastel, will see instantly the difference.
I suppose the underlying recessive gene can influence the appearance of the snake it is in, but not always. I think time will tell if there are clearly markers for such things.
The het leopards I seen with awesome markings, were pure Sonoran, and not a locale mix, that could play a part as well.
Its all neat stuff to watch and figure out, at least try to.

Here are the links to the pics of the pastel het pied and the spider het pied.

Cheers!!
Mike
http://www.grazianireptiles.com/gallery_images/1140464229.jpg
http://www.grazianireptiles.com/gallery_images/1140464366.jpg
more pics

I believe Greg had a "normal" Het Pied from the same male that sired the pastel and the spider. It also had a wierd pattern. It is possible that this was an incubation result, or that his Piebald may have something else hidden.

That is totally possible, that there is an underlying gene in Greg's pied. I haven't seen the normal het. It is clear though something is going on there, besides the normal appearance of a pastel or spider. The common factor between both, is they are both het for pied.
It will be interesting to see the final results, when both are bred to a pied.

Thanks
Mike

whatever caused the look can be reproduced I don't care for the Piebald factor, but Spiders like that are awesome!

The definitions of dominant, recessive, and codominant are man-made, for the ideal conditions. Like black and white. Nature does not have to abide by our black and white definitions but can color in shades of gray. I've seen this sort of thing in pied ringneck doves and white-striped fattail geckos. It's not real common, but it's not unheard of, either.

I'd still call leopard a recessive mutant but note that heterozygous individuals (with a leopard gene paired with a normal gene) can show variable expressivity.

Paul Hollander

Incomplete dominance is not what you were implying, it is actually the partial presence of two traits which are equal in dominance. Codominant genes show both traits in full effect. An example I was given was horse hair: brown and black are both dominant to other colors, and if they are codom then you have both black and brown hairs on the horse. Incomplete dominance would show a mixtue, so a hair color in between the two.

Incomplete dominance is actually what many dominant snake genes are, like hypo boas. If it was a true codom, you would see black scales and hypo scales on heterozygous snakes. Since hypos are reduced black all over (but to a lesser extent than supers) it is an example of incomplete dominance.

Just clearing that one up for you a little.

Nick
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It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long the grasshopper stored up acorns for winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched tv. And then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus stole all his acorns, and he got a race car. Is any of this sinking in?