Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Welcome to kingsnake.com's message board system. Here you may share and discuss information with others about your favorite reptile and amphibian related topics such as care and feeding, caging requirements, permits and licenses, and more. Launched in 1997, the kingsnake.com message board system is one of the oldest and largest systems on the internet.

Click here to visit Classifieds
https://www.crepnw.com/
Click here for Dragon Serpents

curious about hypermelanistics

hayseed Dec 05, 2008 08:14 AM

Hi everyone,

I'm curious about hypermelanistic Leos. I've seen a few on line, and been told that some people are trying to breed more hypermelanistics. Does anyone know what the current state of these are? Most of the ones I've seen on line are not very impressive. They just look like normals with a little more black or extra gray.

Do you think that a really seriously melanistic Leo is possible? Whouldn't it be cool to see a patternless all grey or all black gecko? Is anyone working towards that? What do you think would be the best breeding approach for that? Just continuous selective breeding with the most hypermelanistic? or Something cross breeding with already established patternless morphs?

I'm not a serious breeder, just curious.

Thanks

Replies (1)

indictment Dec 06, 2008 02:17 AM

I think you got the right idea.............selective breeding with individuals and their offspring that exhibit the highest degree of the trait.

I am under the impression that selective breeding would work....it would be sort of the opposite approach from what people did to obtain high yellows. Am also assuming it's a line-bred trait.

Brings up some intersting questions. If a gecko was mostly black, the black would most likely be larger than normal spotting (patterns) with more consistancy.....which means that a patternless hypermelanistic would still look like a regular patternless because all spotting would be gone.

Now, what I would like to see is an albino-hypermelanistic.....kinda a paradox, I know. But I'd assume it would be a gecko that would be all chocolate brown.
-----
2.4.0 Leopard Geckos
0.1.0 California Kingsnake
0.1.0 Copperhead
1.1.0 Eastern Box Tutles

Site Tools