Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi Terry and hi everyone,

I just have a quick question involving genes in breeding hondurans... I understand that if you mate a homozygous albino with a homozygous hypo, you will have hatchlings that are 100% double het for hybino. My question is, this double het for hybino hatchlings... what is the phenotype ( i think that's the term to use : "phenotype" to mean what do they look like physically... right? )...Anyway, I mean would they look normal but carry the 2 recessive genes or would they look like albino-ish or hypo-ish? I would guess that it is the former not the latter (normal looking, i guess) since double het for ghost or double het for snow look like normals. Is this correct assumption?

Any input is highly appreciated. Thanks. /R

The offspring from an albino x hypo (assuming that either wasn't het for the other--ie. albino was't het for hypo) would be all double het for hybino but would appear normal. You were correct in your assumptions. It would be uncertain to tell if you bred those together to determine which would be hybinos or which would be albinos. That is yet to be determined and I believe the only real way is to breed 2 hypos het albino together and when you get an albino, it would be a hybino.

Hope that helped
mgl

Thanks "mgl" for taking the time in answering the question. Now I have two more question (smiling here). One is, does anyone have a true "hybino" or the honduran snake enthusiasts community is still trying to establish how a hybino truly looks like? And two: Anyone ever tried mating a pure/homozygous snow with a pure/homozygous ghost (and what the resulting physical look would be)?

Thanks again,

/r

1) to the best of my knowledge, no one yet possesses a snake they can point to as a known, true, definite hybino. they can speculate, guess, express the likelihood as a percentage. but until it's test-bred it can't be declared a hybino. (and yes, hypo/albino x hypo/albino will yield babies you KNOW are hybinos just by looking. that's on my breeding agenda for next year)
2) that's an easy one--snow x ghost = anerythristics het for hypo and albino.

terry

Thanks a lot, Terry, for taking the time to answer my questions!

/r