Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone have information on the heredity of the color purple in leopard geckos? Isn't purple caused by the migration of pigment? Would that be erythrinin? From what I know it's also a linebred trait... Some geckos have purple bands or splotches, others do not. On Ron Tremper's website, in his "Incubation Effects on Color," Ron says that "lavender" albionos are not genetic rather they... "are the result of incubating eggs at 84-86F." Who here as found that to be true? Does 84-86* seem to produce a certain amount of yellow/lavender geckos? Now with all that said, I'm curious... Is there anyone who is working on developing a predominantly lavender or purple leopard gecko? I'd imagine it would be done in much the same way that super-hypo tangs were produced..through selective breeding. Anyone have anything to say on this topic?

tc_legacy

I can't help you out with the breeding thing.....sorry i have really no clue, but, i would love to have an all lavender leo. I had a gecko that was very lavender....most of his background was a dark lavender but unfortunetely he passed away. The only gecko i have now that has lavender is Zoe (pics coming soon). She still has some lavender on her back and more on her tail.

Red
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Crested Gecko Zeek:1.0
LEOS: Boo: 1.0 normal , Bronx & Nala: 1.1 blizzard,
Lily: 0.1 patternless, Abby: 0.1 albino, Zoe: 0.1 reduced pattern, Dot: 0.1 hypo
Chip: 1.0 papillion (small dog)

Purple is an intermediate color phase which takes prominance in juvinile and subadult leopard geckos. I've been working with it a bit, but I find that it is the most variable color to control displays of- exposure to cool temperatures has been known to darken overall coloration of even mature leos, and purple seems to be the first color to get affected.

erythrinin would control red, btw. You might be correct in your assumption, because I have noticed the most purple remaining in adult specimens of some of the darker tang bloodlines.
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Just curious. is that a banana blizzard in your signature pic?

Thanks
Red
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Crested Gecko Zeek:1.0
LEOS: Boo: 1.0 normal , Bronx & Nala: 1.1 blizzard,
Lily: 0.1 patternless, Abby: 0.1 albino, Zoe: 0.1 reduced pattern, Dot: 0.1 hypo
Chip: 1.0 papillion (small dog)

It was sold to me as one, yes. I tend to doubt it, but have had more important breeding projects to attend to before proving it out, namely bell blazing blizzards.

She's my favorite gecko of all in my collection. This year I'm breeding my ghost male to her in hopes of ultimately cleaning up the blizzard trait.

She will be proven next season.
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I was reading about breeding leopards a couple of days ago and found a site that said that the higher the temperature of incubation the more colorful it will be. Has anyone heard about this? or can confirm it?

Hi

Not sure exactly what you are talking about but I think you are referring to the area on albinos that is not yellow or orange which can range from brown to lavender to pink to white in apperance. If you breed in hypomelanism, you can work towards an all yellow or all orange albino (see pic for my best results of this so far).My theory is that to get an all lavender albino you would have to be working with the melanistic trait, which would reduce the amount of yellow/orange. Only problem is people are still working hard on on melanism itself, the best results I have seen yet were produced by someone in Sweden or something...so I think an all lavender/pink albino is still years down the road unless people have stuff up their sleeve I don't know about (which is of course entirely possible)

This gecko was produced by selectively breeding in hypomelanistic traits. If the trait were instead hypermelanism, I expect you would see the opposite- more pink.

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Sarah Stettler aka Starling
Sarah@stargecko.com
StarGecko.Com COMING SOON! Star Quality Leopard Geckos
Specializing in Hypotangerine Tremper Albinos