Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A recent "former thread" reminded me of some old times when the leash was a little longer and some dogs were barking all over the neighborhood, hahaha.

Anyhow. In my modest opinion, in order to be a morph, there has to be some defining characteristic that makes its appearance different than others, brought about by genetics, selective breeding, etc.
To the best of my knowledge, there are currently 4 axanthic/anerythristic types recognized in BPOF (brooksi phase of floridana)
1)Llemke
2)New England
3) Black and white
4) BHB anerythristic floridana

...if anyone knows of more, please let me know....

maybe it would really help to have an actual description for each type accompanied by a picture. the description should define the type of morph, its origin and what actually makes it different from the other types in this category. If it isn't different, maybe it should be lumped or scratched off the list...

Anyone up for filling in the blanks?

and why would I bring this up? well, those discussions back in '00 and '01 were real firecrackers fueled around the passion of this type. The Llemke axanthic was and always will be my favorite morph, and I would like to see some sane discussion about all the other types that fit under the description of axanthic or anerythristic brooks/floridana so we can reference how the pieces fit. or not....

daveb

ghost female (Llemke axanthic) laughing

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in the light, you will find the road...

I would think it possible that two morphs could be allelic and express different phenotypes. As an example:

Say that the normal gene is Aca uca cua agu
This gene is part of that which transcribes yellow and red colorations.

Morph A, at the same loci has the following sequence Cca uca cua agu
The result is a bluish white instead of yellows or reds.

And morph B has this sequence Uca uca cua agu
The result is white instead of yellow or reds.

Now the only thing that is different is the first base (capitalized for illustrative purposes only) in each sequence which results in radically different phenotypes!

Now if you were to breed a homozygous recessive A to a homozygous recessive B NONE of the F1 generation would have a normal sequence to produce yellow or red coloration. There would be three possible outcomes to such a pairing:

1) A would dominate B and all offspring would be bluish white

2) B would dominate A and all off offspring would be white

3) or they would in combination and create a new phenotype.
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Darwin Rocks!

The reverse could be true too and same phenotype could be produced by mutated genes at different loci.

In this case cross breeding homozygous recessives to each other would produce normals that were double het for each trait. The problem is that in the F2 generation you would have no idea which gene is responsible when the mutant phenotype is expressed. In such a case it would be entirely possible to breed two mutant siblings together and produce another generation of 100% double hets.

This is one reason why I feel that breeding similar traits together should be done vey carefully because once all the unknown multi possible hets start floating around the market it'll become impossible to tell what is what.
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Darwin Rocks!