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are tigers simple recessive?

a tiger mated to a reduced pattern produces...? I have heard before that tigers ARE reduced patterns so whats the difference?

I have been working with genetic reduced pattern or tiger morph for about eight years. The genetics from the animals I am working with appear to be more complex than simple recessive or co-dominant inheritance. Here is what I have observed so far on my founder and subsequent offspring:

Original male bred to normal females: varying degrees of pattern reduction and normal offspring.

Original male bred to visible daughter: duplicates degree of pattern reduction in father, varying degrees in some offspring, and normal offspring.

Original male bred to normal daughter: varying degrees of pattern reduction and normal offspring.

Original male to unrelated reduced pattern females: more dramatic pattern reduction (different from father) and normal animals.

My male has an odd color to him that is almost golden to greenish depending on proximity to shed cycles. In all the cases above, the color only passsed on through direct visible line breeding. I held back some males from two years ago, an unrelated breeding pair and a female replica of dad this past year (demonstrating both pattern and color). The holdback female (joint with Chicago Reptile House) is the only visible offspring resulted breeding between father and visible daughter.

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Rich, it looks to me as if the pattern reduction could be due to some sort of dominant mutant gene. The mutant gene shows some variation in its expression in the pattern. On the other hand, ball python patterns are variable enough that the usual sources of variation combined with the mutant could produce the variation you see.

The reduced pattern male produced some normal babies when mated with his reduced pattern daughter. Both snakes probably have a reduced pattern mutant gene paired with a normal gene. This mating could produce a baby with a pair of reduced pattern genes. But whether this baby would different from the parents is anybody's guess.

Do you have plans to try to separate the original male's color from the reduced pattern?

Paul Hollander

I am trying several different breedings. I admit it is not a huge project right now and females are being bred for other projects. I do plan in the years to come to breed out to pastel, spider and albino at least. The spider combo is pretty cool.

The color trait is something I haven't figured yet and it is not extreme all the time. I need to get accurate photos that depict the variation in color more accurately.

Like everyone, you need a dinking project or two. My other one is a borneo STP project and is more fun to me right now.
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Thanks for the info guys. The reason why I ask is because I picked up a tiger male at the chicago show (incredible price and beautiful animal I just couldnt pass up on), and he will be ready to breed this next year but im short on females. I have my initial investment male spider that will be ready next year and 4 adult females to breed. So I was wondering if its worth my time to breed him to a normal female over a spider. I do have a 300 gram female that I bought at the show (a very underfed 2005 baby) that has a black stripe all the way down her back that has gotten even thicker since ive been feeding her as much as she will eat. Maybe I should be patient and wait until '08 to breed my tiger to my "black back" female? Keep in mind I bought her as a normal but she does not look very normal with that thick stripe down her back.

Genetic reduced pattern x spider has also been produced and created a killer looking spider. That baby is tucked away somewhere for future breeding and I ain't saying where
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wow so those "reduced pattern" spiders I see on kingsnake every now and then are infact from reduced/tiger crossed with spider. I did not think that it was possible crossed with a dominant morph and figured it was a certain line of genetic reduced pattern spiders. Thanks for the info Rich!