Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have been looking at some information that leads me to believe a Italian leatherback X Normal pairing produces leatherbacks and normals. Are there hets produced too? Or because it is a codominant trait do the offspring get all or none?

Thanks

Jeff

Hi

becouse it is codominant there are no hets dragons. so they are leather or not.

Technically a codominate can be het just like any other morph. Het is short for heterozygous which means there are two different alleles present. What makes a Codominate gene different from normal dominate forms or recessive forms is the heterozygous form looks different from the normal wild type and the homozygous (carrying two identical alleles) form. (sometimes called the 'super' form).

So, yes, leathers are hets but unless recessive genetic traits, they are expressed in the animal, recessive hets look like wild type as the trait is overruled by the dominate normal appearance. Codominate hets are expressed as well as the wild type look so it look different from a normal wild type and homozygous form.
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PHLdyPayne

thanks that supports what I had been finding on a few sites.

Jeff

The way I remember what a codominate trait is is through highschool biology talking about human traits: If a curly haired and a straight haired person has children, they have wavy hair. Ta-da! Anything else with hair gets weird, but that one's straight forward usually. I think if two wavy-haired people have kids they'd be one curly, one straight, two wavy. That's always been the best, easiest examply of codominate traits I've heard. Kind of like a simplified eye-color chart is good for dominate and recessive, and hetero/homozygous. I have blue eyes so I'm homozygous recessive. My father has blue eyes, by mother has brown. By brother has brown, and he has to be a heterzygote because of the homozygous recessive father.

That's all the genetics I can explain, becuase after that I start going cross-eyed. I keep beardies because they're sweet, and while they're lovely critters I'm not worried about WHY they're pretty. Or about making prettier babies. I may dabble later, but I'll need a refresher course in genetics and I'll probably just breed guppies instead (they're so easy!)

Oh, and pretty babies by the way.