Reptile & Amphibian Forums

yeah i've heard of spiders that wobble/corkscrew but i recently just heard that black pastels and especially their homozygous are prone to cleft palates. anyone work with black pastels and have any input about how common this is or even better got any pics out there. While im on the topic what morphs have these common genetic problems such as cleft palates and wobble. Matt

From what I've read the ones that are recognized so far are as follows:

Caramel Albinos = prone to kinking (outcrossing has reportedly helped a bit with this)

Spiders = Stargazing / Wobbling (to different degrees, or not at all. Spiders are already massively outcrossed due to dominant inheritance)

Cinnamon / Black pastel = Duckbill / palate issues. (again outcrossing seems to have helped in this regard)

Hope that helps.

A minuscule sample size but I did see a clutch once that contained two supers (parents from different lines).

One had the duck bill and kinking (that doesn't get mentioned much but I think it's also a consistent problem with the super cinnamon/black pastels) and the other one looked fine to me. Really neat looking animals so if we could find out what the variable is that some turn out tweaked and others don’t it would be great to see a higher percentage of the perfect supers.

Something that doesn't get talked about much is the mate factor, many people breed say a co-dom to say a normal, what if it actually matters what "normal" you use? for example, I have been told that say in Pinstripes, if one is bred to a reduced pattern normal, the chances of producing reduced pattern pinstripes is greater right?

What if it works with negative aspects as well? I was told this theory by a well respected breeder, that it just might be what the co-dom is bred to that makes the problem. That sometimes even Normals can affect the co-dom traits either in a positive or negative way.

Could it be that it might be more important than we think...what mate we pair up with these co-doms?

Just an idea, An interesting test would be to take a like a Spider and breed it to say 3 different normals, and see how many from what clutch exhibit Neuro problems or not. We know the color and pattern of the mate can affect the outcome of the offspring?...

Just an idea...
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Executive Reptiles
Amanda Kingsbury & David Kendrick
www.executivereptiles.com

Where you thinking of different "normal" alleles of the same gene as the mutation or genes at totally different locations than the mutation?

I could see either coming into play.

But particularly with mutations that have problems in the homozygous form if there are multiple normal looking versions of that gene I could see the problems sometimes coming through in the heterozygous animals if there are some normal alleles that don't compensate as well as other normal looking alleles.