Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've had a leopard gecko for the past two years, and many other animals before that. I would like to start breeding leopard's, so I'm trying to get as much information as possible. Could someone fill me in on what het means? Thanks!

1.2.4 Hedgehogs
0.1.7 Leopard Geckos
0.0.1 Bearded Dragon
1.0.0 House Gecko

Het stands for hetrozygous 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.
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-Kristin

0.1.2 Leopard Geckos
(Monet, Kumquat, and Tamale)

>To keep it very very simple, a heterozygous animal has alleles for both dominant and recessive traits.

Unfortunately, this definition is pretty complex. To understand it, you need to know the definition of allele, dominant, and recessive.

Here's a much simpler and more accurate definition:

Genes come in pairs. If the two genes in the pair are the same, then the gene pair is homozygous. For example, AA is homozygous because the two letters in the pair are the same. The gene pair aa is also homozygous.

If the two genes in the pair are not the same, then the gene pair is heterozygous (slang = het). The gene pair Aa is heterozygous because the two genes are not the same.

Paul Hollander