Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I don't remember seeing anything asked about this, but a recent post got me thinking.

What's the difference between a patternless and a super hypo? I know a patternless doesn't have any markings at all, but would a 'baldy super hypo' look like a patternless, or would there still be tail markings? Maybe I'm answering my own question here, but I've seen lot of 'carrot tail' super hypo's and can't recall if they had tail markings other than the orange...I've just confused myself.

The other question I have is about patternless genetics. Is patternless a dominant trait, or how does it fit in. I know leos can be het for patternless, so does that make it a dominant gene?

Sorry if this stuff is trivial, but I've started doing a bunch of reading on genetics and I'm trying to piece it all together relative to leos. I have an engineering background, and have never dabbled in biology, but the student in me is curious.

What about 'baldy'? Is that something that can be pasted on as a het trait?

Thanks to anyone who actually made it this far...this has been a lot of writing and a lot of reading.

Cheers
-----
Blaine

0.0.1 High Yellow Juvenile Leo (Echo)

well the difference is that patternless is simple recesive, and super hypo is not and they still have stuff on there tail...

heres a extreme hypo tang which has lost more spots since the pic
(his tail won't grow back but he's fine otherwise)

and a patternless that happens to be het albino (tremper)

-----
Hello peoples

Dispite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage. - Billy Corgan ,Smashing Pumpkins

Just curious...leosandsnakes....the picture you posted on top...what happened to that leo? It looks like its toes are missing also. Was it a rescue?

Looks like its had a rough life.

Thanx,
Crystal
-----
Crystal Light (Yes..thats my real name)

*Whenever you lose a gecko, just think of it as God building on his own Leopard Gecko collection

www.thegeckobarn.com

As far as super hypo goes, it is usually followed by tangerine! Hypo is short for hypo-melanistic, which means reduced black. So basically super hypo means super reduced black. As far as I'm concerned a lot of "SUPER HYPO" look like nice High yellow to me! Now when you start talking about super hypo tangerines/carrot tails, and things you are talking about MAJOR color, and their price reflects this. It is a "Line bred" trait, not simple recessive!

Patternless are exactly that lacking pattern, but are usually fairly dull in color (Kind of like blizzards). Sure there are nice lemon yellow patternless, and there are super ugly ones. This trait is simple recessive.

I remember exactly what it was like having the "reptile bug" and wanting to learn as much as I could. The genetics thing will take a little time, but before you know it you'll be thinking of the odds of producing albino patternless, and so fourth! Good luck, and learn as much as you can, this hobby is SOOO Addicting!
-----
MIKE
4.14 Leopards (SHTCT, and Jungle Albino Trempers)
2.13 Fat Tails (Amels, Hets, and Normals)
1.1 Teratolepis Fasciata
1.3 Crested geckos
0.0.3 Dendrobates Tinctorius (Citronellas)
1.0 Diamond Back Terrapin
14 Snakes (Tri colored hogs, subocs, alterna, rosy boas, and black milks)

Yeah, I stumbled on an online course from MIT about Mendelian Genetics and got hooked. Now I'm just trying to apply it to leos to see if I actually understand it.

When you say 'line bred trait', that means that if the parents aren't that, the kids won't be, correct? The difference between het and line bred is that parents who look nothing like the trait but are het can have kids who look like the trait if paired with another animal that either looks like the trait or has the het for it, but it doesn't work that way for line bred traits. Am I getting this right?

>>As far as super hypo goes, it is usually followed by tangerine! Hypo is short for hypo-melanistic, which means reduced black. So basically super hypo means super reduced black. As far as I'm concerned a lot of "SUPER HYPO" look like nice High yellow to me! Now when you start talking about super hypo tangerines/carrot tails, and things you are talking about MAJOR color, and their price reflects this. It is a "Line bred" trait, not simple recessive!
>>
>>Patternless are exactly that lacking pattern, but are usually fairly dull in color (Kind of like blizzards). Sure there are nice lemon yellow patternless, and there are super ugly ones. This trait is simple recessive.
>>
>>I remember exactly what it was like having the "reptile bug" and wanting to learn as much as I could. The genetics thing will take a little time, but before you know it you'll be thinking of the odds of producing albino patternless, and so fourth! Good luck, and learn as much as you can, this hobby is SOOO Addicting!
>>-----
>>MIKE
>> 4.14 Leopards (SHTCT, and Jungle Albino Trempers)
>> 2.13 Fat Tails (Amels, Hets, and Normals)
>> 1.1 Teratolepis Fasciata
>> 1.3 Crested geckos
>> 0.0.3 Dendrobates Tinctorius (Citronellas)
>> 1.0 Diamond Back Terrapin
>> 14 Snakes (Tri colored hogs, subocs, alterna, rosy boas, and black milks)
-----
Blaine

0.0.1 High Yellow Juvenile Leo (Echo)

The difference between simple recessive traits and line bred traits is in how many genes control the expression of the given trait.

A simple recessive trait is controlled by a single allele and there is very little variation in individuals expressing this trait. All patternless will look very similar.

Line bred traits are polygenic, meaning they are expressed by combinations of many alleles. The expression of this trait will vary greatly depending on how the countless different combinations might occur.

The reason line bred traits are more intersting breeding projects in my opinion is because they can be improved upon year after year. By breeding a hypo tangerine x hypo tangerine you can hatch out babies that might blow the parents away, but on the other hand some of the babies will probably hatch out more normal looking than the parents.

The theory behind line breeding (using tangerines as an example) would be to breed together a pair of orange animals in hopes that some of the offspring will be even more orange than the parents. You would then hold those offspring back and breed them together or back to the parent(s) or you could breed them into a seperate line. Inbreeding is not as big of a problem with reptiles as you might expect, but you always want to outcross as often as possible.

After many generations of line breeding you will end up with a final "product" that is much more orange than any of your founding stock. Basically what you are trying to do is concentrate the "orange producing genes".

Hopefully I wasn't too confusing and that made some sense. Let me know if I need to clarrify anything.

-----
-Ross Payan - www.LeosAnonymous.com

Leos Anonymous

Ball Pythons, Red Striped Leos, W.Hognose and Screaming AFT's

Pretty good! Here's some clarifications from a budding genetecist (note that although Ive studied genetics for a while now, Im new to the gentics of specific traits in leo)

"Line bred" traits tend to be traits that depend on many different genes together that have an "additive" effect. So take yellow coloration, the more of your color coding genes that have the copy (or allele) that codes for yellow, the more yellow you are. In general, breeding a yellower colored animal to a browner colored animal should result in some kind of intermediate less yellow than the yellow parent. Breeding two yellows tends to more yellow but can bounce around a bit depending on the interaction. In general, lots of traits tend to be "line bred" like human height.

Hets expression of traits (or phenotype) depends on whether the trait is a dominant (as I understand hypo is...is this true?) or recessive (like patternless and albino). A het for a dominant trait will actually display that trait but be a carrier for the normal condition, whereas a het for a recessive trait will not display the trait but will carry it.

One last note: it seems that some people use "line bred" incorrectly to indicate they have a "true breeding" stock, something that is really only an issue when you're dealing with dominant traits. This is a stock where all individuals are homozygous for a particular trait. This is usually done by repeated inbreeding or by weeding out individuals that produce normals when bred to normal individuals (called outcrossing). The weeded out indivduals produced normals because they were het. All individuals that show a simple recessive trait are homozygous for the trait and thus true breeding for it.

Okay, hope that was helpful and fun!
-----
1.0.0 Sandfire Tiger Bearded Dragon
0.1.0 Ball Python (nice yellowish normal)
0.0.1 Sinaloan Milksnake
1.0.0 Patternless Leo
0.1.0 High Yellow Leo
0.1.0 (Super?) Hypo Tangerine Carrot-tail Baldy Leo