Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone have any experiance with leucistic bearded dragons? My boyfriend and I were hoping to get one and then eventually breed it with a red phase or some other color variation. How often is the recurrence of the leucistic gene? Do they have a greater sensitivity to light or any problems? If you have any info we'd be glad to hear from you.
~Kerri and Brian~

You really don't know anything about genetics. Do you know what a leucistic reptile is?

Let me give you a little help. A leucistic reptile has no pigment cells. It is not an albino that has pigment cells that don't produce pigment and have pink eyes. The leucistic trait is recessive. If you bread a wild type with a leucistic animal, all of it's offspring will look normal, but they will carry the leucistic trait. If you were to bread the offspring to each other, 1/4 would be leucistic, 1/4 would be wild types, and 1/2 would look wild but carry the trait.

If you were to cross a wild type with a leucistic, and then cross the offspring with the leucistic parrent, 1/2 of their offspring would be leucistic.

You need to do some reading on the subject. Good luck with all your breading projects.

I appreciate your response, but you didn't have to be a prick about it. Obviously I didn't know all the details on leusistics or I wouldn't have asked the question. I was just exploring my options for different color morphs since in my area they are few. In the future if you are going to belittle me as well as responding to my post please do not respond at all.

Click on the hyperlink (or copy & paste) - http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=308119,308119
- to find him being a prick again. On that occasion he was the uninformed one (even if he would never admit to it). Dragonlover, you came to the right place to ask questions. I will aplolgize for Elaphaefan's rudeness. It does seem to be his forte - as you can tell by the link, genetics are not. So don't listen to him. At least he has apparently learned a little something about simple genetics. His stats are correct. We were all ignorant once. Paul (Morlock) has the down-low on the "Leucistic" Dragons - he is the dragon master. The "Leucistics" are not Leucistic or they wouldn't have any pattern (or colouration) at all. They are simply white-ish.

But if there were leucistic they would be double recesive, multiple recesive traits would be responsible for the leucistic aperance
So they can't be bred the same way as dragons with only 1 recesive trait like a hypomelanistic or an albino.
So your outcome (25%, 50%, 25%) for the het leu x het leu pairing wouldn't ad up.
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There really is no such thing as a leucistic bearded dragon. The animals you see advertised as leucistic are really hypomelanistic which is a recessive trait. They are not more sensitive to light and their care is the same as any other dragon. The only difference may be when breeding because some hypomelanistic males don't get a black beard (usually a light gray color instead of a deep black) and the female does not always recognize him as a dominant male and will not be receptive to mating efforts.
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Paul Morlock
of CaptiveCreations and
Retail Sales Rep. for Sandfire Dragon Ranch

But if there were leucistics they would be double recesive, multiple recesive traits would be responsible for the leucistic aperance
So they can't be bred the same way as dragons with only 1 recesive trait like a hypomelanistic.
So the outcome (25%, 50%, 25%) for the het leu x het leu pairing wouldn't ad up.
As far as i know they have always been bred the same way as hypomelanistics.
So couldn't it be that if there was a leucistic dragon there have been made some mistakes with breeding them to produce more???????????
There would be color in the 25% that was suppose to be leucistic in a het leu x het leu pairing, wich is pefectly logical if leucism is double recesive.
Could this be the reason that everyone is saying that they do not exist?????????

But If for example you make het leucistics from snows (leucistic x snow) and then do a het lue x het lue paring the difference in fenotype of the 25% ("leucistic" wich is at least hypomelanistic would be very hard to see and a hypo het for leu could look very much the same as the treu luecistic.
So then this could be the case why leucism went al wrong en why color was bred into them later. (because they were hypomelanistic & het for leu.
Could this be the reason that everyone is saying that they do not exist?????????

IMO it would be very much the same as snow boa wich is produced by 2 recesive traits combined, only 6,25% could be a snow boa.

Back to the dragons.
The only thing is that i do not know if the erythrophores and the xanthophores are linked.
If they are linked the leucism is IMO double recesive.
If the are not linked and are both seperate recesive traits in a leucistic then they would be triple recesive.
If you would do a het leu x het leu pairing knowing this there would be a very slim chance for a leucistic in a clutch. (meaning a dragon wich is himozygous for those 3 traits)

greetings from the netherlands,

Duncan
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