Reptile & Amphibian Forums

y is this bad and what would happen if u did?
thanks in advance

i believe it all goes back to the theroy of all spiders are some what related. and since incest it BAD and spiders are co-dom, if you breed one to a normal then you WILL produce spiders and adding diversity to the very narrow family tree of spiders.
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Thanks
Chad Ramsey
onetonyj@yahoo.com

It's bad because spiders that have one normal parent often have neurological problems (wobble heads) and when both parents are spiders the problems are more likely to occur, if not deadly.

whats does wobble heads mean, like there head wobbles uncontrolable or something

Spider x Spider breeding hasn't been done with the results publicly disclosed enough for us that haven't tried it to really say for sure. It's more a mater of speculation that perhaps the lack of a homozygous spider known to the public is an indication that two copies of the spider gene MIGHT be lethal.

If spider is homozygous lethal that just means that it would be impossible to produce a viable homozygous spider so it would remove most all the incentive to breed spider X spider. The two spider breeders would be better utilized pairing with other animals to produce more of the normal (heterozygous) spiders, possibly in combination with other mutations.

A homozygous lethal gene does not necessarily mean there would be any problem with the heterozygous versions. However, some have taken the fact that many heterozygous spiders seem to have this head spinning quirk as additional evidence that spider might be homozygous lethal. Several years ago when I originally inquired about the possibility that spider might be homozygous lethal the head spinning/wobbling had not yet been publicly disclosed so I was just going on my perception that a public homozygous spider seemed overdue.

I suspect that spider is one of the most outbred morphs there is. Because it's a dominant type mutation it doesn't require inbreeding to reproduce. Also, the economics and above mentioned taboo against breeding spider to spider have resulted in lots of spider X normal breedings. I'm not sure if all spiders are descendent of a single imported animal or not but as many of them as there are from as many different generations of spider X normal I wouldn't think two randomly selected spiders would not be particularly related.

I don't know that there is public evidence that the surviving spiders from a spider X spider clutch are any more likely to have the head spinning/wobbling symptom than the spiders from spider X normal. The condition is seen consistently in spite of so much outbreeding of spiders that I suspect it's just another trait of the spider gene its self and not some other gene that can be outbred or concentrated by inbreeding. Now perhaps the homozygous spiders from a spider X spider breeding do survive and are more likely to spin or spin to a greater degree but details like that are not likely to be disclosed by the few who have tried spider X spider breedings.

I made a mistake editing and stuck "not" in where I shouldn't have 4 words from the end of this sentence:

"I'm not sure if all spiders are descendent of a single imported animal or not but as many of them as there are from as many different generations of spider X normal I wouldn't think two randomly selected spiders would not be particularly related."

should read:

I'm not sure if all spiders are descendent of a single imported animal or not but as many of them as there are from as many different generations of spider X normal I wouldn't think two randomly selected spiders would be particularly related.

i dont have a pair of spiders or anything i was just wondering. im actually gonna go pick one up today which will be my first bp.

but lets say i did breed spider to spider and they didnt seem to have the head wobble or whatever,would that mean they would be homozygous spiders and in turn that would mean what?

it's said that "ALL" spiders have a head wobble. Some are less and some are more. Some grow out of it as adults and some do not. that said (and i am no expert as i JUST got me a spider) homo or het they can wobble. correct?
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Dave
Phila, PA

www.DNReptiles.com
Myspace/DNReptiles
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We don't know if there are any homozygous spiders. It may be that all spiders seen so far are only heterozygous for the spider mutation (have one copy of the gene with the spider mutation from one parent and one normal copy of the gene at the spider location from the other parent). So we don't know what the homozygous spider is like. It could be just like the heterozygous spiders in all ways (including the tendency to wobble), different than the het spiders (maybe wobbles more), or lethal (maybe a homozygous spider can't hatch).

so they pretty much all wobble to some extent then or just some

from what i've seen any head wobbleing seems to be random some get it worse some not at all, wether breeding spider x normal or spider x spider. a dominate gene like the spider that has spread through the market as much as it has and been breed primarily to completely unrelated normals and various other morphs, it has been so far outbreed by now, that in-breeding isn't an issue unless you continuely backbreed siblings but why? as for the spider genetics if you breed spider to spider you get 75% spiders 25% norms but 25% of the spiders born have doubled alleles and is the superspider, although you cannot see it visually it looks like the same homozygous spider siblings. when you breed a single allele spider x norm its 50-50, breed a doubled allele spidey x norm and get 75%-25% spiders in the clutch, to bad you can't tell until the breeding on them is done. thats why some people report getting great numbers of spiders there clutches- the hidden superspider gene
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MikeJ-solar serpents

"when you breed a single allele spider x norm its 50-50,"

Correct, a ball python with a single spider allele would be a heterozygous spider. Most people in ball python circles don't call them that but most or all of the spiders seen so far are genetically heterozygous spider. Heterozygous means having an unmatched pair of genes and because a heterozygous spider has one spider mutant allele and one normal for spider allele each offspring has a 50/50 chance of getting the spider mutant allele and being another phenotypic spider (genotypic heterozygous spider).

"breed a doubled allele spidey x norm and get 75%-25% spiders in the clutch, to bad you can't tell until the breeding on them is done. thats why some people report getting great numbers of spiders there clutches- the hidden superspider gene"

A double allele spidey would be a homozygous spider. We don't know if these exist or not. If they do hatch and breed then a homozygous spider x normal would give you 100% spiders (the normal heterozygous kind of spiders). This is because the homozygous spider has a matched pair of spider genes so no normal copies of the same gene to pass on. All of its offspring would get a spider mutant copy from a homozygous spider parent.

Super is not an official genetic term so it's hard to say what the definition is but I would tend to reserve it for the different looking phenotype of homozygous co-dominant mutations. If spider is fully dominant and the homozygous spiders are in all ways the same as heterozygous spiders except for breeding results then I think it would be better to call them homozygous spiders than super spiders if their appearance is the same.

hmmmm.. think i'd rather call my animals 'supers' than 'homo's' haha lol
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MikeJ-solar serpents

ya id rather call them supers than homos aswell. lol
thanks for answering my newbie questions i really appreciate it alot. im sure ill have more for you shortly.

Wouldn't a double-alleled spider (homozygous/super spider) bred to a normal produce all spiders? (not 75%-25% like you said?) A double alleled spider can only pass on the spider gene, it has no normal alleles to pass.