Reptile & Amphibian Forums

An arabesque to an arabesque. What do the babies look like and do you end up with more than half the litter being arabesque.
thanks
Jason

Arabesque x Arabesque
25% Normals
25% Super-Arabesques
50% Arabesques

I am not really 100% and will be corrected if wrong lol. I am sure numbers vary A bit do to nature playing a role.
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0.1 Suriname
0.1 Albino Het snow
1.0 Albino Het stripe

So there are super arabesque, does anyone have some picures that I can see. Do they look the same and a normal arabesque???

Nobody knows for sure yet if there is even the ability to produce a homozygous arabesque. There were a few animals produced that were slightly different then normal arabs, but until they are raised up and bred its unknown. The differences imo (as well as a few other people) were only enough to possibly be either homozygous animals, or even just variants.
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Randall L Turner Jr.
Boas make the world go round.

IMO, there has to be the ability to produce a homozygous arabesque. Since the trait is at minimal known to be dominant, the only question remaining is could it be Codominant. For it to be Codominant, the homozygous or "super" form would be a third, easily distinguishable phenotype. In other words, in a het arabesque to het arabesque breeding there would be three visibly different groups of babies:

Phenotype 1 - 25% Normal - having no arabesque genes
Phenotype 2 - 50% arabesque - having 1 arabesque gene
Phenotype 3 - 25% homozygous - having 2 arabesque genes

I would think that since arabesque has been around for a while that someone would have been jumping up and down about there visibly homosygous babies by now. With the lack of that, I'd expect arabesque to fall into the dominant trait where the same het x het breeding would yield:

Phenotype 1 - 25% normal
Phenotype 2 - 75% Arabesque (1/3 homozygous)

And that the homozygous ones could only be proven by breeding. Of course, just as in salmons there could be probable ones, just nothing certain.

My albino arabesque:

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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
21.29 BRB
19.19 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

I agree with you that its likely they are just dominant, but there have been known to be fatal genes where 2 alleles together do not produce viable offspring. Spider Balls have been theorized to be such a gene, atleast they were a few years back.
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Randall L Turner Jr.
Boas make the world go round.

For any of you with the new "The Complete Boa Constrictor" book by Vincent Russo, there is a picture of the "potential" super arabesque produced by Steve Hammond on page 178. I say "potential" super, because it has yet to be proven. It may be as someone said earlier in the thread, "just" an annomoly, and not a super. Whatever it is, it is visually distinct.

The arabesque gene is unfortunately going to turn out like the spider gene. Me and a buddy of mine were discussing that a few weeks ago that breeding an arabesque x arabesque would produce no homozygous/super form. I saw the photo you are talking about by Steve Hammond, but in my opinion, I think he just got lucky to produce such clean looking offspring. What I mean by that was obviously they had a lack of speckling and the saddles seemed to be stretched out more than a normal arabesque would've. I have seen the results of other arabesque x arabesque breedings, and the babies looked nothing like Steve Hammonds, they looked like normal arabesques. Steve Hammond just has the bloodline perfected I think. Since he originated the gene, he has a headstart on all of us as far as selective breeding goes, and I think over time it has payed off and he produces some killer arabesques. Similiar to Jeff Ronne with pastels, he produces some incredible babies.

Just like Steve's possible super with the missing saddles, I have seen a number of Arabesques from Arab X non-arab (either may carry other mutations) litters that have come out with a similar appearance.

It isn't that they WON'T be a Homozygous Arabesque, just that it will look like a regular Arabesque. This is the definition of a dominant mutation, both heterozygous and homozygous phenotypes are the same.
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http://www.GilbertBoas.com/

It seems a bit far fetched to me. I imagine theres been more than one arab to arab litter? I dont know the details of this "spider ball" stuff, do the homozygous versions come out dead? If so, it would be fairly obvious when approx 25% of the arab to arab litters come out dead. Wouldnt we know something that obvious by now?

I think the supply is fairly low on these guys, not sure why considering how long theyve been around. I'm not sure there has been enough arab to arab litters to determine much about the homozygous version.
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www.topnotchboas.com

No they don't come out dead, they just don't exist, would be nice if it was that simple. Sperm fertilizes an egg, both cells carry the fatal gene and the zygote, or embryo or what ever stage it reaches stops development. Simple as that. Its a theory, most people with the capability of looking for such a thing would find this a waste of time as those who would look for it don't have the capability.
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Randall L Turner Jr.
Boas make the world go round.

>Sperm fertilizes an egg, both cells carry the fatal gene and the zygote, or embryo or what ever stage it reaches stops development.

This would still produce a slug or dead embryo. Which would depend on how early the embryo dies. Do arabesque x arabesque produce a higher number of slugs/dead embryos than might be expected? That's the next question to ask. If the answer to that question is no, then the most likely explanation is that arabesque is just a Mendelian dominant mutant gene, and nobody has done the breeding tests needed to find a homozygous arabesque.

Paul Hollander