Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was reading the link that another member posted in regards to genetics, part of the article referred to ALL hypo's having clear nails. I have read other sites and it stated the contrary, in fact it stated that the clear nails were a genetics trait in and of itself and that animals without hypo melanistic traits have been found to have clear nails, and as such the clear nail trait and the hypo melanistic trait were two separate genetics traits that have surfaced in the one animal.....Just wondering what everyone's opinion was?

Do you have a link to the websites you are talking about?

The clearnailed hypo's are the treu hypo's wich means that it's genetic.
It is a simple recessive trait, a single genetic trait.

If it would be two seperate traits then you couldn't breed 100% clearnailed hypo's over and over again that easily to begin with.

It has been proven that
Homoygous x normal = 100% Heterozygous for Hypomelanistic
Heterozygous x Heterozygous = 25% Homo, 50% het, 25% normal
Homoygous x Heterozygous = 50% Homo, 50% het.
Homoygous x nHomoygous = 100% Hypomelanistic (Homozygous)

So that kind of gives it away i think.

If it would be 2 separate traits that you would only have 1 ou of 16 dragons that is double homozygous when you breed 2 hets together.
So one dragon with clear nailes and no dark pigement.
The rest wil be one of the following:
- Double het,
- Het for on trait or the other
- Homo for one trait and het for the other
- Normal.

Could be that there are some seperate traits but don't know of the have been proven yet.
Can't really say something without proving it by breeding results
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All hypos DO NOT have to have clear fingernails. The only type of hypos that have clear fingernails are simple recessive hypo pastels. There are dominate hypos and some believe codominate hypos; both of those hypomealinistic animals do not have clear fingernails. Hope this clears things up.

Has this been proven to be genetic?
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Hey Duncan,

Are you asking if the dominate and codominate hypos have been proven genetic or the simple recessive hypo pastels?

Ik now the the recessive hypo's are proven, I have a couple of those myself.

I was talking about the dominant and co-dominant hypo's
Do you know if that has been proven?
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I'm not 100% sure if the other hypos have been proven dominant or codominant but this is what I've experienced. First I don't believe anyone else or myself have codominant hypo lines, but I could be wrong. In order for a hypo to be a truly codominant trait there would have to be a super form of that hypo. They great thing about a codominant trait is that not only the homozygous form but the heterozygous form are phenotypically different than normal’s. So if bred a heterozygous codominant hypo to a normal bearded, 50% the babies would look the like codom hypo (they are het for the codom trait which is hypo) and the other half would appear normal; or if you have the super form of the codom hypo, which would be a homozygous animals, you could breed it to a normal and get 100% of the offspring that would be heterozygous for the codominant trait (they would not look like the super form, but they wouldn’t look like normal’s either). Besides breeding super to super and getting all super form babies you could breed a super (homozygous animal) to a het and get 50% supers (homozygous animals) and 50% hets. Here’s a little recap about codominant genetics.

Codominant gene expression
Het x normal = 50% het, 50% normal
Het x het = 25% supers (homozygous animal), 50% hets, 25% normals
Super x normal = 100% hets
Super x het = 50% supers (homozygous animal), 50% hets
Super x super = 100% supers (homozygous animals)

The reason I don’t think there are any proven lines of codominant hypos out there is because I have not heard of any super animals being produced when breeding any of these “codominant” hypos, but I could be wrong.

I would imagine that the majority of hypo lines out there, besides simple recessive hypo pastels, would be showing dominance or incomplete dominance gene expression. Dominant gene expression is when you breed one type of animal; say a completely white hypo, to a normal dragon. The resulting offspring will either look completely like one parent or the other, so completely white or normal. I would say there are very few if any hypo lines that truly show dominant gene expression.

Dominant gene expression
Dominant x normal = dominant and normal looking offspring
Dominant x dominant = 100% dominant looking offspring
*There are no heterozygous animals dominant gene expression*

Now this brings me to the last and final type of gene expression that you could account the majority of hypo lines to in the trade today, which is incomplete dominance. Incomplete dominance is when you cross two different types of animals and get a blending of the genes. For instance if you breed a red x white animal, the babies would be pink. So if you bred a white hypo to a red animal a lot of the animals would be a mixture of those two colors, but since dragon color seems to be a mixture of dominance and incomplete dominance, I don’t think you would ever be able to call one line completely dominate or incomplete dominate. For instance, I bred a red dragon to a yellow dragon, 100% of my babies did not come out all orange. I have a few that were full body red, a majority with 80% orange with yellow or red, and then some full body yellow. This type of gene expression does not indicate those dragons to be anyone of the traits mentioned above. I would say most of the colors in bearded dragons are variable, but do to selective breeding we are able to get more intense colors, or lack there of in certain cases.

Incomplete dominance
Red x white = 100% pink offspring
Blue x yellow = 100% green offspring
Pink x pink = 100% pink offspring

Hope this helps! Thanks for reading this if you didn’t get bored and just exit out!

That's an interesting question. My dragon has only one clear nail on his left foot. We were wondering why that happened and if it is genetic. It makes him easy to identify though.

After talking with a few other breeders , some seem to think having one or two clear nails is an indicater of being het for hypo. Not sure if this is proven

peace,
nathan