Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know the pastel is codominant...but right now in the classifieds, a relatively large merchant has a "het congo pastel" male for sale...and a "het" leucistic...aside from the mojave, lesser, butter, group...what the heck is a "het leucistic" and is there a simple recessive pastel I've just never heard of?

Since derogatory comments aren't allowed on Kingsnake - let me just say you might want to look somewhere else.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
The Blog
nihil facimus sed id bene facimus

yeah, to say the least-look elsewhere!
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

Breeder of:
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I think they have their morphs screwed up. According to VPI the congo morph is just a pale version of a normal. So it is either pastel or it isn't, no such thing as het pastel. Kinda like the pastel 66% possible het fire someone sold me. It is either fire or it isn't. I really didn't care because he was throwing it in as a bonus, in addition to the snake that I actually wanted. I figured if it turned out to be a firefly, great for me. Unfortunately, it was just a regular pastel.

I also took a look at the het leucistic, and if it really is, my guess is that it may be a fire (het black eyed leucistic). I wouldn't spend the money without some sort of guarantee. Or like everyone else said, take your business elsewhere.
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Honestly, I wasn't looking to buy either one of them. Just wanted some clarification to make sure I wasn't completely out of touch with reality.

Technically, a pastel is a 'het' super pastel...as the homogeneous form is a super pastel. Though we just call them pastels and super pastels...

As for leucistics...they are all the 'super' form of various other codom forms...(as I understand it) be it a fire, mojave or lesser. (would say yellow belly but they make ivories...which are kinda leucistic but not as white...)

Unless this guy is selling pastel 'siblings' (basically the totally normal offspring of say a pastel x normal clutch and for some reason is treating the normals as 'hets'..(but they are not, same idea as the spider siblings). Either way, I suggest looking at sellers who at least know what they are producing/selling.
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PHLdyPayne

I didn't see the ads, and can't really find it.

But there is nothing such as het pastel like you said. Pastel is a codominant name. A Pastel is actually a het Super Pastel.

Are you sure it's not a pastel ? May be it would be a Pastel het for something else (ghost, caramel, albino, axanthic, pied, clown, ...)

For the het lucy, it could be a het russo. That still make sense but I would be careful.
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love this world, don't hate it.

http://market.kingsnake.com/userview.php?uid=10674&v=a

Honestly... I wouldn't buy any of those balls. Doesn't seem like the sellers know what they have. You may end up spending 100's on snakes that are just normal.

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- S.S.

The Family
0.1 Pastel Ball Python
0.1 Normal Ball Python
1.0 "Dinker" Ball Python
0.1.1 Columbian Red-Tails

Yea...definitely not a pastel. Their other ads actually have pastels in them. They really apparently think that the normals that came out of their clutch are hets. Hilarious.

that would be s&s exotics the het lucys they are selling are indeed het lucys and better known to people as vin rousso het white diamonds and the pastels they have are known as a line called congos i forget who first had them but the normals het pastel are mis labled there are no such thing as het pastel there het lucys are actually real nice examples of rousso hets and the congo pastel they have is also very nice so all in all the only thing the have listed wrong are the het pastels. regards

A het pastel has a pastel mutant gene paired with a normal gene. These snakes are pastels. IOW, there are het pastels, but het pastel ball pythons do not look normal.

Actually they wouldn't be het pastels they would be het super pastel just as mojaves aren't het mojaves they are het BEL. Semantics aside it was intentionally misleading.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
The Blog
nihil facimus sed id bene facimus

I deleted a bunch of stuff from the post so as to not get it pulled and then the end product didn't come out right. I wish we had a 5 minute edit button.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
The Blog
nihil facimus sed id bene facimus

I bought a "het Pastel", it has the squished 000's on the sides like a pastel but it is a "normal"? No better odds at getting more pastels than breeding with a normal normal?
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1.2 Normal ball-Alex,Siv,Nanna
1.0 Pastel-Tony
0.2 Green Anoles-Penelope,Lacy
1.0 BCI-Bulwai
0.1 Burmese-Chelsae4.5'

Nope. Because there's no such thing as a "het" pastel. If it's not visually a pastel, its just a normal. (in this particular case)

I'm with Paul on this. I would say that all pastels are hets. A heterozygous animal does not have to be normal looking or even half way to something else. Understanding that pastels meet the definition of heterozygous by having a mismatched pair of alleles at the pastel locus would make it simpler to predict their offspring. Also most Pinstripes are still hets even though the homozygous pinstripe looks the same (i.e. no super).

I completely understand that. But if I hand you a normal looking ball python, and tell you it carries the pastel gene, I would be incorrect right? If someone is selling a pastel as het for the superpastel, I'm all about it. But that's not what this ad was for. This vendor had regular pastels, and het pastels. Trying to imply that their pastels were simple recessive, which I think we can all agree, they are not. That's a far cry from saying that pastels are the heterozygous form of the super pastel.

'Het' just means two different alleles at the same point along the dna strand that makes up an animal.

Pastels are not simple recessive traits, they are co-dominate which means an animal only needs a single alleles in the pair to have a visual manifestation of the 'Pastel' trait. When a co-dominate morph is homogeneous, you get a different looking animal from a normal and the 'het' version. Then there are dominate traits, which look the same in both the het version and homogenous version (ie a normal is a dominate trait. Spiders and pins are also examples of dominant genes.

No typical normal looking ball python will ever be a pastel, spider, woma etc. in a 'het' way, like a simple recessive. If it carried any of these morphs on a single alleles, they would look distinctively different from a typical 'wild type' normal.
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PHLdyPayne

Sounds right to me. Whether you call Pastels "het" for Super Pastel is a personal choice. But calling a normal BP "het" for Pastel is genetically and logically incorrect.
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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.0 Woma (hidden gene?), 0.1 Yellowbelly
2.0 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband

I agree with wlcmmtt in everything except calling a pastel ball python het for super pastel.

Pastel is the name of the mutant gene.

Homozygous pastel is a genotype -- two pastel genes in the gene pair.
Heterozygous pastel is a genotype -- a pastel and a normal gene in the gene pair.

Super pastel is the phenotype (appearance) produced by the homozygous pastel genotype.
Besides being the name of the gene, pastel is also the phenotype (appearance) produced by the heterozygous pastel genotype.

"Het for super pastel" mixes genotype and phenotype.The pro geneticists frown on this sort of mix. You can call a pastel ball python a pastel (phenotype) or a heterozygous pastel (genotype), but calling it a het for super pastel is out.

So then you could call a blue eyed lucy a homozygous mojave? (or lesser, or better, whichever)

Yes. Blue-eyed leucistic is the phenotype. Homozygous mojave is the genotype.

What about a REALLY dark (aka..ugly) pastel. I have seen some P R E T T Y ugly ones that at first glance look like normals...lol. Just playing devils advocate.

Some ads are intentionally misleading, while some can be honest mistakes. To see which is which, simply look up the reputation of the seller.

Dave