Reptile & Amphibian Forums

If you think you have something new, how many litters with the same results are required to "prove out" something in your belief?

Its not really a matter of how many litters but what litters, I'll explain:

If you are dealing with something that you believe to be simple recessive I think you should breed one of those animals to an unrelated normal make hets and breed a pair of those animals together to prove it out.

If you have an animal that you think is co-dominant I think you should breed that animal to a completely unrelated animal and look for the expected ratio of morph to normal.

Well, obviously if in one outbred litter there are no "visible hets" then you most likely (though not necessarily) have either a recessive or nothing. Do you trust this in a single litter? And, obviously if you get "visible hets" in a single outbred litter you have either recessive (I'm thinking "visible hets" of leopards), dominant, codominant, or polygenic...surely, you wouldn't market the "visible hets" as codom' with only one litter having been bred? Okay, let's say you find a generic "Colombian" of unknown heredity that is aberrant in such a way as to look much like a Swedish jungle, but not just like one, and the first highly outbred litter (Bci) results in similar appearances and in numbers to indicate "jungle/codom'" though not Swedish? How many litters from there to say you've proven a new morph?

Rather than a number of litters I would like to see one litter
from more than one boa.

Littermates with the same trait getting the same expected
results.
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www.NewWorldDragons.com,
NewWorldDragons@NewWorldDragons.com

"Colombian" is NOT generic.. it is a locality.... "boa constrictor" is generic..... "BCI" of unknown origin " is generic... "Wild phenotype" is normal

Why do people keep calling normal BCI "Colombians" ??? People do know that Colombia is a country right??
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Marc Duhon
Lafayette, Louisiana
SURINAMBOAS.COM
kaiyudsai@SURINAMBOAS.COM

As already stated by others, it's not so much how many litters as what kind of litters. Different pairings to prove different types of morphs and of course even size of litter is key.

Some examples:

Visual assumed to be recessive: (ie Albino)
Breed the first visual to unrelated to make "hets". Then those hets need to be in several breeding trials. Het x Het to produce litters of 1/4 visuals. Breed Het back to original visual to produce litters of 1/2 visuals. Lastly Visual x Visual to produce all visuals is key to proving recessive.

Visual assumed to be dominant: (ie Hypo)
Breed the visual to unrelated to produce litter(s) of 1/2 visual hets. Breed those visual together to produce litters of 3/4 visual hets. No clearly identifiable Supers.

Visual assumed to be the Het version of a Co-dominant: (ie Roswell Ladder Tail)
Breed the visual het to a unrelated normal to produce a litter of 1/2 visual hets. Breed visual hets together to produce litters of 1/2 visual hets, 1/4 visual supers and 1/4 normals. Breed two visual Supers together to produce litters of all visual supers.

Visual assumed to be the Co-dominant form: (ie Roswell Ladder Tail)
Breed the visual co-dominant to a unrelated normal to produce a litter of all visual hets. Breed visual hets together to produce litters of 1/2 visual hets, 1/4 visual supers and 1/4 normals. Breed two visual Supers together to produce litters of all visual supers.

Don't know the actual statistics but with litters of 20ish you should have enough to reasonably prove a morph assuming your outcomes are more or less close to expected outcomes.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

What everyone else has said...plus, the ability and willingness to properly document and cohenrently describe the trials that ones believes prove something is absolutely required if one is expecting their "proof" to be accepted by a wider audience.

Proving to yourself is one thing, but hoping to prove it to the world comes with a higher set of expectations.

Mark

Well, for starters, you need to have something different to prove out in the first place.
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Jeff Carr
West Coast Constrictors
www.westcoastconstrictors.com

Co dom into unrelated would be enough for me , because you are producing 50% co dom off spring. Recessive would take longer (Visual morph X unrelated... hets X hets or back to parent), if viuals are produced (VPI, Albino.....) then you are on to something. You should try it !

>>Co dom into unrelated would be enough for me , because you are producing 50% co dom off spring.

A true co dom has two phenotypes, one for heterozygous and a different one for homozygous. To prove whether it's co dom or simple dominant (Roswell vs hypo for example) you would have to produce litters where you expect to have some babies with one morph gene and others with two. Still requires multiple pairings and likely raising up babies to breeding size unless you stumbled across a new morph having multiple previously unrecognized hets produced and already raised up like the Roswell project.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

True, but my point was proving a morph vs co dom dom super..... Thanks

Page 13, from NPA Information Booklet #1 (Genetics). NPA = National Pigeon Association.

Breeding Tests

To analyze inheritance, these steps are needed:
(1) List the differences between the standard wild type and the type to be tested.
(2) Cross with the wild type, both sexes.
(3) Compare a dozen or more of the first generation birds with the wild type.
(4) Mate first generation birds with wild type, unless they are like it, and produce at least 20 young. Compare with wild type.
(5) Mate first generation birds with the type being tested, unless identical. Produce at least 20 young, compare with wild.
(6) Mate first generation birds birds with each other; produce 50 or more offspring, compare with wild type.

Further tests are needed if the trait proves to be complex.

Results of the tests, when summarized, tell a great deal about how the traits are inherited.