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I have ended up with a mix match pair of So. pines. I have a male patternless from an Ocala Co. Florida line. and female leucistic So. Pine from another private breeder. I am certain the patternless is not multi het or should I say the line has always bred true patternless (some do have abbarent pattern or semi patternless).
If I breed these two together what will the offspring look like and/or what kind of hets will I get? Will be normals that are double het? Will they be nromal but 1/2 het for one and the other 1/2 het for the other? I know the debate of leuc. So. pines are not true Leucistic but a result of captive breeding processes, so would the offspring lean towards patternless?
I figure with my luck I'll probably end up with a bunch of butt ugly lil fellers LOL!!!!!

Thanks in advance for your time - Del

Del,

I find it interesting that you state that the patternless animals have always breed true. Except for some patternless animals that were manmade that we had a few years ago, it has always been the case when we bred wild caught lineage patternless animals while we ended with the preponderance of the animals patternless, not all of them were. It could be you have just been lucky, but I would suspect that what you have are some of the manmade variety that are out there. Anyway to answer your question if the animals are truely homozygous for patternless, then the offspring will look normal and carry the patternless gene.

Keep us informed with what you get.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Your right when I said they bred true I meant they did not have any other morph in the clutches. These animals have been refined through captive breeding as I know the paretns to mine were several generations into captive breeding. If they were "enhanced" by introducing another line I am unsure. When a clutch was hatched you would get a minority that were somewhat normal. I just meant that no albinos, hypos, etc. popped out of the mix. I never got to breed mine as the female died and the male leuc also died, leaving with an odd pair. So what is the scoop on leuc so. pines? Many say they are not true leucistic? This too was one of the reasons for my question. So many combos LOL!!!
They both are to young to breed this year, but next year will be fun waiting to see what pops out.

Thanx-Del

Del,

Hopefully you didn't get the sense that I was down playing the animals at all. In my opinion manmade morphs and wild caught lineage both have a place in the hobby. But the patternless gene is a pet peeve of mine and we have worked over the years with locale specific animals ( collected over several years in a 1/2 mile radius of each other ) and have hatched probally 150 or so of the offspring to those 10 animals. So I found it very interesting to see what your results had been. So far we have found the patternless trait to be a co-dominate trait ( in the wild caught line from around Ocala ) that displays itself exactly as you expect. As far as the manmades, so far with the pinks and patternless combined it has acted exactly the same way for us.

As far as leucistic is concerned, my definition of leucistic is a little harsher than most folks. To me if they do not have black eyes and a patternless solid white body, I do not call them leucistic. Additionally when bred together they must produce nothing but the same colored animals. ( exactly like the leu. Texas Rat ) So far I have till yet to find one that is like that in the southerns. Without outside intervention that is.

My thoughts anyway, which doesn't make it rright just my approach. Like you said so many morphs, so little time etc etc. LOL.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

I had only seen the offspring I have not produced them for myself. I was told what came from the clutch I bought mine from and seen pics of a hatchling group together. Who knows, the morphs may have been left out of the pics. This is why I am so curious about how these two morphs are manmade (leuc and pattenrless). When I do breed them I should get normal looking het for both, or a mix like my multi het bulls produce? If I get a mix of morph offspring would you say they both may have some manmade backgrounds? Is there a common gene shared by the leuc and patternless that would, should, or could turn up? My leuc female has no pattern but is a light yellow color with black eyes. I am actualy hoping to produce the normal hets because I want to work with normal so. pines and I figured breeding these two might make a nice outbred colony. To breed these guys together and get some hyper amel, 1/2 ghost patternless, 1/2 striped, lil freaks would be sad... I would hate to produce something that looks like a frankenstein movie gone bad LOL

I thougt the patterness gene is co-dominant? In my somewhat limited experience breeding a regular patterned southern to a patternless southern yielded about half being patterless and half being regular. I am assumng that all the regular southern I have used in these pairing were homozygous for regular pattern (didn't carry a patternless gene). I know Stephen Fowler believes this trait to be co-dominant. What do others think?

Greg