Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just a couple of pics of our male spider taking care of business. He is shown breeding one of his larger girls. We are hoping for good things from him this year. Let us know what you think. Thanks

PG EXOTICS

One more

PG EXOTICS

That's a BIG mama!
Good Luck!!!!!
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RicK Denmon

Ball Boutique,Inc.
What are we talking about?

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Sean Bradley
Owner : EbN
www.ExoticsByNature.com
www.BallPythonMorphs.com
www.CornSnakeMorphs.com

Thanks Sean....any luck with your boy yet?
PG EXOTICS

... at 630 grams! He is growing SO fast... it is unreal! I want to feed him up for another month before I try to breed him. If I can get him up to 750 grams then I will throw him in with some "ladies." I just hate it when small males go off food in breeding season. I don't think he will but better safe than sorry. He does have sperm though!

Good luck... take it easy!

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Sean Bradley
Owner : EbN
www.ExoticsByNature.com
www.BallPythonMorphs.com
www.CornSnakeMorphs.com

Im sure he will breed a ton of girls. Our male has been very active. He went off feed about a month ago and this is the first girl he was with. He is pretty small...right around 640g, but he stopped eating and there wasn't too much we could do about it. So we decided to throw him in....and he is definitely doin' it. Good luck with your male and we will be in touch. Thanks
PG EXOTICS

Awesome!
He's a looker for sure.

Good luck!!!

Take care,
Jen
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HerpCrazy Reptiles

doh!

Yes this has been done with only spiders produced, so the spider is a dominant morph.
Jason
Circle City Serpents

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A dominant genetic trait is based upon 2 alleles. Additionally, when dealing with a dominant trait the heterozygous and homozygous phenotypes look the same. In other words, a dominant trait involves 2 alleles and you cannot tell the heterozygous form from the homozygous form by looking at the animal.

When a homozygous dominant trait animal is bred to a wild-type ( "normal" ) animal, all of the resulting offspring will be heterozygous for the dominant trait...and they will all have the same look as the homozygous dominant trait parent.

If you were to take a homozygous dominant trait animal and breed it to 457 wild-type ( "normal" ) animals, every offspring would look the same as the homozygous dominant trait parent (but would be heterozygous for the trait).

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been one litter produced from a Spider where the entire litter has been Spiders. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever bred a particular Spider to a number of "normals" and had every single offspring come out a Spider. In the absence of this occurring, Spiders cannot be definitively referred to as "dominant".

but I think it's pretty safe to say that spiders are dominant.

Jake

I am not aware of any litter ever being produced from a Spider breeding where every single hatchling was a Spider.

I am not aware of any Spider ever being bred to multiple "normals" where every single hatchling came out a Spider.

If you truly believe that the Spider is a dominant trait, you must also truly believe that heterozygous Spiders are indistinguishable from homozygous Spiders by looks alone. The only way to distinguish them would be to breed them. Heterozygous Spiders would produce some Spider offspring and some "normal" offspring. Homozygous Spiders would produce all Spider offspring...absolutely no "normals" whatsoever.

So...since you believe that the Spider trait is dominant, please tell me how many Spider breedings you are aware of that resulted in every single offspring being a Spider.

I'm not trying to be funny or to start an argument. I am just making a point that it is impossible to classify Spiders as dominant based upon the breeding observations that have been made to date. Not only is it impossible to classify Spiders as dominant...it is also extremely unlikely that they are. If Spiders were dominant, multiple breedings resulting in litters comprising nothing but Spiders would already have occurred.

It is not really that important to us as breeders what the Spider trait is classified to be. The important thing is that when you breed a Spider to a "normal" you generally get around 50% of the offspring being Spiders.

How many spiders from spider X spider breedings are old enough to have been bred yet? I'm thinking probably not that many so I would not go as far as saying that spider probably isn't dominant just because a homozygous spider hasn't been proven through breeding yet.

However, I can think of at least two possibilities where it might not be dominant.

1. No one has been lucky enough to produce the expected 1 in 4 homozygous spider from breeding heterozygous spider X heterozygous spider. Maybe some day soon a super spider will be produced and it will look different than a heterozygous spider. As more and more spider X spider breedings are done without producing a visible super spider it seems less and less likely that spider is co-dominant like pastel but it's always still possible that the luck has just been terrible so far. If someone (NERD would be the only one I suppose) wants to provide the number of spiders and normals produced by spider x spider breedings so far I can calculate the odds of it being co-dominant and the homozygous just not being hit yet. It’s hard to prove something by it's absence, but eventually the odds will be long enough that you can feel confident in making assumptions.

2. Spider might be lethal when homozygous. I think this would actually also be technically a type of co-dominant in that the homozygous form would be different than the heterozygous form, it wouldn't exist. It might be that whenever a sperm and an egg both provide a copy of the spider gene the egg dies and hence no homozygous spiders hatch. Again, this would be very hard to prove as you are looking for something that isn't there, a homozygous spider. I think they way they figured this out with the dominant spot gene in hamsters was that they noticed that the litters from dominant spot x dominant spot averaged only 3/4 the size of normal litters (because of the 1/4 homozygous dieing before birth) and that no one ever proved a homozygous dominant spot through breeding. It would take a long time to be reasonably sure if this where happening.

I don't think 1 or 2 above are very likely but they are possible and until a homozygous spider is proven through breeding to a bunch of normals and producing only heterozygous spiders we really can't be 100% sure that it's dominant. Even if the undesirable scenario 2 turns out to be the case (again, probably not particularly likely) it isn't the end of the world. Spider has already shown that it's a great gene to combine with other mutations, you just probably wouldn't bother to breed spider x spider anymore. It would free up more spiders for new crosses.