Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm beginning to breed leopard geckos, and I keep seeing "het" everywhere. What does it mean? Thanks!

I'm not 100% positive as I don't breed geckos (yet) but it probably stands for Heterozygous - which has to do with genetics. To keep it very very simple, a heterozygous animal has alleles for both dominant and recessive traits. A heterozygous animal's phenotype (i.e. What you can observe with your eyes) is always the dominant trait. For example, the allele for brown eyes is dominant, blue is recessive. A person with brown eyes can have either two dominant brown alleles OR one brown allele and one blue allele. A person with blue eyes will ALWAYS be homozygous - which means they will have two of the same blue alleles.

A heterozygous animal would probably be nice to have when breeding because (depending on what you breed it with) you can produce offspring with both dominant and recessive traits. If you breed a gecko that is heterozygous for albino (it will look "normal" with a homozygous albino (will look albino) you will be able to produce both "normal" and albino offspring, in theory.

So I hope that answered your question without confusing you too much. And I may have some terminology wrong... It's been a while since Biology. So you breeders out there, feel free to correct me.
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-Kristin

You explained it perfectly. You even used the same example I use when I explain it... Intresting... (Im het for blue eyes)
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Leopard Geckos 1.3
Bull Frog 1.0
Bearded Dragon 1.0