Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hello
still confused over difference
have a "snow white" hypomelanistic from dragons den
anybody know what is the genetic difference?(if any)
is a snow white still a "darker" morph than leucistic?
if i breed her with a leucistic vs. hypomelanistic, what should i expect?
thanks

well...leucistic doesn't really exist in bearded dragons...

what people are calling a leucistic dragon is really a hypomelanistic dragon. and therefore, what people are callin a hypomelanistic dragon is mostly a normal dragon. there is a lot of "gray-area" when using the term hypomelanisim. hypo means less than. so a hypomelanistc dragon has less melanin than a "normal" dragon. I don't even know what a normal dragon would look like anymore.....too many colors mixed into the normal dragon morph.

if you breed your snow dragon (which is a hypomelanistic dragon with very small amounts of melanin) with a hypo dragon (which has a little more melanin than the snow) you will get ---> very low levels of melanin in all your babies...assuming that your hypo dragon is homozygous.
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a free range dragon is a happy dragon

thank you
so, in theory my "snow white" should genetically be the same as what others call leucistic
it is interesting/ confusing because even established breeders seem to make a distinction between the two
I guess it comes down to the phenotype(color morph) of similar genetics
when breeders use the term het for leucistic, i guess they are saying that the dragons carry the gene(not necessarily show the gene)

Leucistic typically means 'no pigment/pattern' but the eyes are unaffected, they appear as normal (though many in reptiles are 'blue' hence you hear about 'blue eyes lucy' in ball pythons).

Hypo is a prefix meaning 'below' or 'low' thus a 'hypomelanistic' means low melanin..or low dark pigment. Thus you would expect a bearded dragon who is hypomelanistic would have little dark pigment and thus a reduction of pattern, but all other pigments would be unaffected. Dragons do have more than one pigment type, so these other 'colors' will be more prominent as they are not washed out by melanin.

I don't know if snow morphs are actually hypomelanistic or something different. bearded dragon morphs are rather complicated and not well understood for the most part. To me, a leucistic bearded dragon will be completely white (a solid milk white) with black/dark eyes. But then again I am not an expert on genetics.
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PHLdyPayne

yeah...your snow white is what others are calling leucistic, or what some people are calling 'marketed leucistic', and what is actually a hypomelanistic. I would stay away from anything labeled as a het, unless you are going for some crazy new morph. Especially if you don't know or trust the breeder, your het will most likely be a normal. I've seen pictures on this forum that owners have said their dragon is a hypomelanistic dragon and it has more dark pigment than a normal dragon i had years ago and I paid $15 for mine.

i believe that a true leucistic dragon, if it was cold, it wouldn't be able to darken its pigment to attempt to warm up. But, that may be a different mechanism that's not a part of melanin.
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a free range dragon is a happy dragon