Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does any one have a pic of a moonglow bearded dragon? I saw an add for het moonglows. Any genitic info?
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Adrian De Leon
Hissenia Reptiles

I saw some moonglow x babies for sale for like 15 bucks on craigslist. I asked the lady what it was and this was her response.

"Moonglow is a giant of a beardie-line. they must be measured over 18" and usually have a light tan coloration with dark brown markings. they're very rare now-a-days, with hardly any breeding pairs left. They have german giant in them, thus the huge size, and usually sport zero white, even on their bellies. My female is the only breeding moonglow female that I know of, and I've been searching for more. I'm breeding her to further the moonglow line, which is why I'll be doing a bit of inter-breeding between her and the male juvenile of hers I have.

If any females hatch out of these clutches, I'll be keeping in close touch with those that they go to to make sure that they are taken the best of care. The last clutch that this pair laid was all male, which is why I've got to be very careful with any arising females. They're needed to keep this line afloat.
I got it from the original Moonglow breeder- Lynn. she doesn't have any breeders of that line left.
the average for a normal beardie is 16" full-grown.
They were never really common at all, not a popular line."

From what I understand its a made up morph that Lynn tried to start with normal dragons. Either this girl was fed a line of poo and really thinks she has something spectacular or was feeding me a line of poo to sell babies?? I was curious and not really wanting to purchase.
The pictures of the dragons she sent me looked like normal dragons with average size.
I am curious about this too and someone correct me if I am wrong about this line but I really think its nothing?

You have to remember that every morph or line is a name assigned by a breeder. There are no real morphs. There are more common ones because they are produced and marketed by larger breeders. Even German Giant is just a name someone assigned to their large dragons. Morph names make the dragon sound more exotic and therefore sell better. In the end there just all dragons, Pogona Vitticeps.

It takes a little more to create a line and actually have a solid morph. Buying a dragon somewhere and calling it something like starlight yellow and it being a starlight yellow is bogus or. True most morphs are what a breeder names it but its usually there work and known genetics put into it. It takes time to create a solid line. Well for someone who is actually into breeding. If I take a Satyrday Red dragon I bought and called it a Sizzlin Red that would be wrong. Its still a Satyrday Red. I did not create that morph. You have to put in time and get a consistent look to a certain morph for it to be an established line. That is my thoughts behind it.
I use to breed pit bulls. True they are all American Pit Bull Terriers but there pedigree has everything to do with how that dog is going to look and what it will produce. Genetics is a HUGE part in breeding like 99.9999%. If the genetics are not there then your dogs are going to look like something you got from a back yard breeder. Same with dragons. You can not take a normal and expect to get red babies from it. You have to have the genetics tucked in there.

I agree sizzlin... The only down side to morphs is that sometimes people tag a name on something someone else created( this is usually done with color phases and not true morphs) or, in this case, do it to sell more dragons. It's nothing more than a dirty trick.... and from what I read, this Lynn person has the wool pulled over the sellers eyes... If it's the same Lynn I'm thinking it is I met her at a show in Oklahoma and she tried to feed me a line of crap to sell me a couple dragons that had a little color in them. the rest of her stock looked like normals to me but she had outragoues prices on them.

Just to add my opinion... a true morph is not a color or size... albino, hypomelanistic, translucent, leatherback, American smoothie, these are morphs.... when you breed for them you have a guidline that you can go by as to how many will turn out with said morph.. granted it is variable and not set in stone it is unlike color morphs in the fact that color can be bred into or out of a line of dragons depending on if you selectively breed for a particular color. This type of gene is more like a polygenic trait which meens it can be increased or decreased by the way you breed.

Later,
Robert Wood
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Great spirits have always been recieved with violent opposition by mediocre minds. Albert Einstein

thanks.. I asked if the hatchlings were het for moonglow. I got this response from the same seller..

"Moonglow, in their full state, are a tannish color with dark brown markings. Little white can be shown, if at all, once they're adult. My female has zero white anywhere on her and has a black beard. I don't know if the black beard is part of the moonglow thing, but she has it.

And as for het, they are half moonglow and half normal, so if you breed two of them together you'd get 50% full moonglow and 25% half-and-half and then 25% normals."

Left me kinda confused. Im not sure what a half-and-half is.

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Adrian De Leon
Hissenia Reptiles

There is no specific gene for morphs. So there would be no het for moonglow. Just as there would be no het for citrus. Specific traits like hypomelenistic with clear nails can have hets since they are produced in proportion to the likelyhood of that trait being passed from the parents and showing. If there was a het for moonglow then their would be a het for normal too. lol.

She needs a lesson or two in genetics...lmao half and half...LMAO oh brother... someone really pulled the wool over her eyes...
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Great spirits have always been recieved with violent opposition by mediocre minds. Albert Einstein

I googled it and found a picture of what looks like a dragon with no dark pigment (ie lacking melanin..but eyes were normal) so probably a nice looking hypoamelanistic dragon. It certainly had all kinds of 'white' in it as well.

Morphs generally mean two different things the way I see it. Traits and genetic mutations.

Traits would be breeding for non genetically specific 'things', such as big size, with the theory, breed a big male to a big female, you are likely to get big offspring. The German Giants are a good sample of breeding for traits. The reason this line is called German Giants is they were developed by a German breeder who's goal was to make the biggest and most robust bearded dragon he can. Since then other breeders all over the world have breed them with other morphs to add color and interest to the German Giants (they all looked normal colored and patterned before, just bigger than a typical normal)

Genetic mutations are your albinos, hypotranslucents, Chris Allen Reds, etc. How these works is the morph is genetically carried. Often the animals are line bred (breeding parent to offspring, sibling to sibling, etc.) to isolate the genetic mutation so most if not all offspring look like the desired result.

Of course too much extensive line breeding can greatly increase the chances of harmful and unwanted mutations to crop up, so its always best practice to 'out breed' them to unrelated stock, then use the 'carriers' to breed into other 'carriers' to keep the genepool pure without losing the desired trait.

Genetic traits can be simple recessive, (need to have both alleles (one from each parent) carrying the mutation for it to be visible in the animal), dominant (only need one for the morph to be visual and it overrides recessive traits if paired up. When both alleles are the same, the animal won't look any different than it does with just one alleles having that dominant trait), or co-dominant. (much like dominant, but if both alleles carry the co-dominant trait, it looks different than a typical 'normal' looking animal or an animal who only carries one of the co-dominant alleles).

Bearded dragon genetic mutations are mostly recessive with some co-dominant morphs as well, I am not sure.

Now, for the information about the moonglows that gal told you...she doesn't understand how genetics work. Heterozygous basically means the alleles pairs are not identical. Herpers just shorten this word to 'het' to make it easier. Depending on the the type of genetic mutation, a 'het' can be visible (if dominant or co-dominant) or look exactly like any other wild type/normal animal, but just carries the recessive gene paired with a dominant (normal) gene.

To breed a het with another het..if they are het for a recessive trait, the offspring will only have a 25% chance to look like the recessive trait, all others will look normal, but each normal looking animal will have a 66% chance to be 'het' for the same trait.

Bearded dragons are a bit more complex though when it comes to color and pattern. Some are obviously recessive in nature, proven due to breeding, others act differently which isn't so easy to prove via breeding. How each genetic mutation works, I will let the big breeders who have been spending decades perfecting their lines explain it.

Back to 'Moonglows' it is possible they are a genetic mutation but never caught on, thus just are not bred for the trait anymore or very little. Or it could have been renamed and the new name stuck better, or it was never a true genetic mutation and offspring never developed the same appearance. Without finding the original breeder there probably isn't any way to find out if this morph still exists...I think it probably is more like a nice pastel or hypoalmanistic line somebody tried to sell off under a new name, or just wasn't popular and they mixed it with other things or went out of business.
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PHLdyPayne