Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I deal in mainly sandfires, reds, snows and hypo snows, as well as corals and some red crosses and a really nice orange line but I am not that fermiliar with the pastel line and how it was created. Any info would be greatly appriciated. Thanks in advance.

Pastel being another word for hypomelanistic. The way to produce pastels is to breed two pastels, or one pastel and one het for pastel (50% would be pastel), or two het for pastel (25%would be pastel). One of the things I like about this trait is that it is, or it isn't, and you can tell from the beginning by the clear nails.
Paul

Hypopastel was originally meant to describe an animal that is Hypomelanistic and has clear nails. Those are two separate recessive traits. Now a days people use Pastel to pretty much describe anyting that may be light. I think the problem is that people see pastels in the ads and say oh my dragon looks kind of like that, and suddenly that person has a pastel. Then other people see the first wrongly named dragon and say oh that looks like mine and they to now have a pastel. I think that many people have come to the conclusion that there dragon is a pastel without knowing truly what one is.

Another thing people do is call an animal that has light peaches, pinks, or yellows Pastels just to describe the color.
-Randy
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AlphaDragonZ
www.AlphaDragonZ.com

Just to add to what these guys have said Hypomelanism is a from of albinism. It is a recessive trait in bearded dragons as far as the hypopastels go. These traits or anamolies as they are referred to, just pop up at times due to the way the genetic code is passed to the baby and/or how the codes develope the embryo. Darwins theory is that this happens in nature and is normal in the process of evolution to see if this trait will help the species survive in the wild. Traits that are not in the best interest of the species usually disappear.
With that said what is happening with the anomoly is that there are tgwo layers of skin.... the epidermis and the dermis. The dermis is the outer layer of skin and has its own seperate melanophores from the epidermis. Melanophores are what produce and store the melanin. In the hypopastel trait what is happening is that there is a genetic code that was eother not complete or was sort of jumbled up and the dragon can't produce the melanin. That is why you don't see hardly any black if any at all in this anamoly. There is no melanin (or very little) to travel to the surface through the little tubes it uses when it needs to warm up and darken to absorb more heat.

With the hypo/snow line you were talking about the genetic defect is in the dermis or outerlayer of skin. That is why they can still turn black, thier nails are black, and thier beard gets balck at times and also why they're body can darken. The epidermal malanophores are functional. The thing with the dermal defect is that melanophore aids in the production of the color pigments which in turn can either completely wipe out the color of a dragon, hinder the production to the point there is color but it is washed out or faded in appearance, or actually not affect the color pigments only reduce the amoount of black in the outer skin to let the color show better. It depends on the animal and how the defect affects it. That is why some of them turn white but still darken at times, some appear faded, and some look like pics are doctored they are so pretty...LOL

Hope that helps. If you want to learn more there is a book called Reptile and Amphibian Variants by H. Bernard Bechtel that is very informative and where I got most of this information.

Later,
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Robert Wood
Tulsa,OK

Thanks that was great info appriciated the help.