Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Why are females spiders priced lower than males? Shouldn't it be the other way around like pastels and other codom/dom morphs? Is there a reason for this? Do you think the prices of female spiders should be higher than males?

Michael Ibanez

I dont have a Spider,but i understand the economics of it.

If there were a higher priced co-dom out there that would be needed to make a higher end combo with a spider.
Then the females would in fact be more expensive.

Look at it this way...
If the only morph out there was a pastel.
Then the males would always cost more,since they can make more pastels with normal females.
However when you have a spider male and a pastel female(and many normal females) then you can make Bumblebees and use that same Spider male with the normals.
Versus the other way around(ie,male pastel/female spider)in which case you will only get pastels from you normal females.

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3.12 Ball Pythons
0.1 Mutant Thayeri

No super spider. There's a super Pastel, and you NEED a female pastel to produce it. There is no super spider trait (although you can have a homozygous spider) so why make spiders with a female when you can get one male spider and 30 females and make many many spiders. A female can ONLY have ONE clutch per year at best. A male can sire at least 10, possibly more. Male spiders generate more moolah, so they cost more moolah. Doesn't get any simpler then that.

What does a moolah look like?
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RicK @ BbI

Ball Boutique,Inc.
Proud sponsor of this forum

I haven't seen it in 10 years when I started buying these damn snakes! LOL!

I could see it being a little bit of both.

Probably the big cause is the lack of a super spider as Jeff pointed out. Super pastels make female pastels valuable and spiders don't appear to have a visibly different form that requires a female spider. If a homozygous spider is eventually proven then maybe female spiders will strengthen a little relative to males because at least then you will know that a female spider is capable of producing a homozygous spider that will produce all heterozygous spiders when bred to a normal and not just half as with the current spiders (hets).

However, I can also see where when you are working on combos you will want your male to be the most expensive morph. Especially with co-dominants where you can also breed that male to normal girls and get morphs. There is so much potential for nice spider crosses (pastel, ghost, albino, axanthic, etc.) that it makes sense to buy one spider male for all those crosses and breed him to currently less expensive females of the other morphs.

noone yet? right.......

there is still a chance that there is.....

so.....buy all them girls now...before they go up......LOL

.........

anyone ever prove you cannot double clutch a ball?........hmmmmmm..
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yep
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Same as proving there isn't a homozygous; it's hard to prove a negative.

I wish I had a feel for how many spider X spider crosses there have been so far. I get the idea that there have been enough that a visible super spider is conspicuous by it's absence. If I knew how many offspring of spider X spider have hatched without a super I could put a probability to missing a super just by bad luck.

Similarly, I wish I knew how many potential homozygous spiders (offspring from super X super) have been grown up and bred so far without confirming any homozygous. Given the timetable it probably hasn't been that many yet. However, about 1 in 3 spiders from spider X spider should be homozygous if the gene is completely dominant and not lethal when homozygous. If only a few have been bred so far it may just be bad luck. If dozens have failed to prove homozygous then you have to start wondering if a homozygous spider is possible or not.

Shouldn't it be 1/4 homozygous with spider x spider? This would be just like any other het x het only the het phenotype here is not normal.

I haven't worked with codom/dom yet--is there some fundamental thing that I am missing?
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1.1 BPs (Syd and Nancy)
1.1 Het. Albinos (Bill and Beatrix)
0.2 French Lops (Lapine and Jacquotte)
0.0.2 Firebellied Toads (Stanley and Stuart)

Randy said 1/3 of the SPIDERS should be homozygous, if you breed spider to spider you 'should' on average, get 25% normal 50% heterozygous spiders and 25% homozygous spiders. Unless other things come into play like lethal genes.

Mark

>>Shouldn't it be 1/4 homozygous with spider x spider? This would be just like any other het x het only the het phenotype here is not normal.
>>
>>I haven't worked with codom/dom yet--is there some fundamental thing that I am missing?
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>>1.1 BPs (Syd and Nancy)
>>1.1 Het. Albinos (Bill and Beatrix)
>>0.2 French Lops (Lapine and Jacquotte)
>>0.0.2 Firebellied Toads (Stanley and Stuart)

got it. thanks.
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1.1 BPs (Syd and Nancy)
1.1 Het. Albinos (Bill and Beatrix)
0.2 French Lops (Lapine and Jacquotte)
0.0.2 Firebellied Toads (Stanley and Stuart)

always a treat to read this stuff.......

who proved it or disproved it...?........

NOONE

even if a super spider does exsist..it hasn't been proven.....it may look exactly the same as a regular spider and have to be bred to normals to prove it...it would have to throw all spider babies.......and then be homo for spider as you all are saying..

......yes..it's 1/4..?..right.....

.....don't matter...I have no spider yet.....I think next year for the $2000 I can get some.......hahahaaaaa...YEP......

..........
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yep
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The idea of a possible homozygous for a completely dominant morph is sort of the complement of the idea of a possible heterozygous for a recessive morph.

With any morph type (recessive, co-dominant, or completely dominant) the genotypes inheritance works the same:

het X het = 25% chance homozygous mutant, 50% chance heterozygous, 25% chance homozygous normal

With recessive you can't tell the hets from the normals so you lump them together after you pick the homozygous mutants out and you end up with a 66% chance het for the reminder of the clutch.

With completely dominant you wouldn't be able to tell the homozygous mutant from the heterozygous mutant so you lump them together after you pick out the normals and you end up with 33% chance homozygous (66% chance heterozygous). Basically you go from 25% chance of the entire clutch to 33% chance of the subset of the ones you can't tell apart after you pick out the ones you can identify on sight.

One would think that if enough time has passed to make Spider Ghosts, Spider Albinos, Spider Pastels and Spider Super Pastels then enough time has passed to make a "Super" Spider. I'd say it's safe to say that their will never be a Super Spider.

Corey

"One would think that if enough time has passed to make Spider Ghosts, Spider Albinos, Spider Pastels and Spider Super Pastels then enough time has passed to make a "Super" Spider."

Yep, I think even without hard numbers to ponder (i.e. how many babies have been produced from spider X spider) most people are ready to concede that there have been enough that a stunningly different super spider doesn't seem likely.

However, regarding combos, it's amazing how quickly the can be produced with dominant type mutations. A spider het for another mutation male could be ready to breed in 6 months to an existing adult female homozygous for albino/ghost etc. and bang, you could theoretically finish such a project in two consecutive breeding seasons.

I just don't know if there has been enough time to grow up female spiders, breed them to male spiders, and grow many of those males up and breed lots of them to test for homozygous spider. Throwing an extra generation of FEMALES in just really slows things down.

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to how many potential homozygous spiders have been bred so far without any yet proving homozygous?

Super? Could we not have a super but it looks the same?
A super pastel we can see it is 'special" but perhaps the spider produces a super that looks like itself. How many spiders when bred to a normal ball produce all spiders? How often has this been observed and how many times with the same spider.
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RicK @ BbI

Ball Boutique,Inc.
Proud sponsor of this forum

"Super? Could we not have a super but it looks the same?
A super pastel we can see it is 'special" but perhaps the spider produces a super that looks like itself."

I guess it all depends on your definition of "super". AFAIK it isn't really a technical term. I've taken it to mean the phenotype (appearance) of a homozygous co-dominant. I.E. that a "super" should look different than a het as with pastels and tiger retics. If spider turns out to be completely dominant and there are homozygous spiders that look just like heterozygous spiders I would prefer to use the genotype "homozygous" to describe them rather than the term "super".

"How many spiders when bred to a normal ball produce all spiders? How often has this been observed and how many times with the same spider."

That is something I would really like to know. I seem to remember a couple of candidates for homozygous spider this summer where the first clutch produced all spiders and they where thinking they might prove homozygous but then subsequent clutches produced a few normals proving the spider stud to be only heterozygous spider and the first clutch just lucky. I don't know that there are any proven breeder spiders that haven't yet disqualified themselves from being homozygous by producing a normal but then not everyone is posting breeding info so there could well be some.

I'm willing to bet that there have been homozygous spiders produced AND proven. However I doubt that many people would be willing to fess up to that since the existance of a homozygous spider that doesn't look any different from a heterozygous spider, yet is capable of producing twice as many more spiders in a season then a het spider, would only serve to lower the price even further and would make the females even less desirable (due to longer turn around time to produce and the capability of producing fewer) thereby also lowering their price even further.

Mark

>>"One would think that if enough time has passed to make Spider Ghosts, Spider Albinos, Spider Pastels and Spider Super Pastels then enough time has passed to make a "Super" Spider."
>>
>>Yep, I think even without hard numbers to ponder (i.e. how many babies have been produced from spider X spider) most people are ready to concede that there have been enough that a stunningly different super spider doesn't seem likely.
>>
>>However, regarding combos, it's amazing how quickly the can be produced with dominant type mutations. A spider het for another mutation male could be ready to breed in 6 months to an existing adult female homozygous for albino/ghost etc. and bang, you could theoretically finish such a project in two consecutive breeding seasons.
>>
>>I just don't know if there has been enough time to grow up female spiders, breed them to male spiders, and grow many of those males up and breed lots of them to test for homozygous spider. Throwing an extra generation of FEMALES in just really slows things down.
>>
>>Anyone care to hazard a guess as to how many potential homozygous spiders have been bred so far without any yet proving homozygous?

Interesting idea. However for me the existence of a homozygous spider would make me more interested in female spiders. I'd love to have a homozygous spider male but would need a spider female to have a shot at producing one.

normal spider looking, but still produce all spiders when bred to any female or male? People are producing 100% spiders out of their spider X normal breedings, of course they never tell you if all the clutches from these animals are 100% spider hatchlings. I do think we would know by now, but is this theory a possibility.
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Chad Bachman

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Chad Bachman

I'm willing to bet they would know the answers to whether or not there are enough breeding done to validate that there is/isn't a super spider.

I would think that there have been enough tests since spiders came into existence in 1999.

Don't know if anyone saw my other post but...Lets say that there is no super. Wouldn't this make spider females more expensive way down the road. LOL......Combinations between higher end codom/dom morphs. Cinnamon spider, mojave spider, pinstripe spider????

Super spiders but looks the same? Hmm.

Michael Ibanez

I'm willing to bet they wont tell us...LOL.
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Chad Bachman

If supers do look like regular spiders, what will this do for the spider market?

Either way, I love my female spider and can't wait to produce bumblebees. LOL

Michael Ibanez

Actually he did. Kevin came on here over a year ago and said that in all of his breeding he had never produced a super spider and concluded that they were Dominant but not co-dominant.

Mark

>>I'm willing to bet they would know the answers to whether or not there are enough breeding done to validate that there is/isn't a super spider.
>>
>>I would think that there have been enough tests since spiders came into existence in 1999.
>>
>>Don't know if anyone saw my other post but...Lets say that there is no super. Wouldn't this make spider females more expensive way down the road. LOL......Combinations between higher end codom/dom morphs. Cinnamon spider, mojave spider, pinstripe spider????
>>
>>Super spiders but looks the same? Hmm.
>>
>>
>>
>>Michael Ibanez

I agree with Mark.

No one disproved it? Ok then. Go to NERD's website and look at what the GRANDFATHER of all spider Ball Pythons has to say about it. In fact, I'll be nice enough to link you there.

Hmmmm....geee......

www.newenglandreptile.com/ball_spider.html
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Signature file edited; oversized banner removed. Please update/correct to an acceptable smaller size. Thank you. [phw 9/26/04]

"When bred together we imagine a white-sided patternless animal with a hypo golden back"

That there is possibly a super?

Michael Ibanez

That description was written BEFORE numerous spider x spider attempts had been made. The "genetics" description CLEARLY says "Color & Pattern mutation - Dominant". Doesn't get more black and white than that.

Email Kev and ask him directly. Kev and Kara are totally cool people and have always answered my questions and comments promptly and professionally. The guy KNOWS spiders, so why speculate? Ask him to ease your mind.

I guess I could have e-mailed them directly. However I'm not really interested in knowing information that isn't public (could I share it or not?) so I've been trying to get some numbers posted on a forum.

I've seen posts where Kara indicated that they have breed spider X spider enough without seeing a super that they are convinced there will not be a visible super. I trust their judgment on this but it would be nice to know how many is "enough" so we can all make up our own minds.

The main area of speculation right now is if there is a homozygous spider (not a super, just a homozygous spider that looks the same as a heterozygous spider). Here again knowing how many spiders from spider X spider have been bred would be very helpful. If it's only been a few so far it may be just bad luck if none have produced only spiders.

No breeder owes us data. RDR takes a big risk with the breeding records he publishes. Anyone can go count up how many lessers he has produced. Since he didn't sell too many of those early on you can make a pretty good estimate of the world population of lessers. On the other hand I would be very unsure trying to guess how many mojave's or spiders exist. There may well be way more of both of those than lessers but without any published numbers (and with both mutations spread out with more keepers) some might tend to make the wrong decision on which is more rare.

Basically I think the herp community could be a resource to help figure out new genetic mutations when data is shared but the bottom line is that the data is the breeders to share or not share as they see fit but when it's not shared the buyer needs to be wary and research the best they can.

The same goes for the fitness of new morphs, a potential buyer needs to be vigilant due to the tendency not to publish any information that is potentially damaging to sales or advantages to competition. I'd like to think that everyone who bought any caramel genetics in the last few years was warned ahead of time about the kinking problem. Seems to me that the earlier that information was shared the better chances we as a community could find a way around it. Are there other morphs out there with secret problems?

Great post. I think this is what we should use the forums for...to SHARE data. I didn't know about the kinking problem but I'm glad this information was passed on in this forum. As a community, we need to help each other out. Not every breeder will expose EVERYTHING they know, so it is up to us to fill in the gaps.

HOLD BACK YOUR FEMALE SPIDERS.

Michael Ibanez

I recall that on NERD's site they had spiders for sale...they said on a few of the photos that they might be possible super spiders. So we still do not know.

Now my question are lucies fertile?
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RicK @ BbI

Ball Boutique,Inc.
Proud sponsor of this forum

Barkers had a het for blue-eyed leucistic for sale (originating from Vin Russo line), so I would say Vin's line is anyway.
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Chad Bachman

So how was the het produced? Are not the hets Codominant?
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RicK @ BbI

Ball Boutique,Inc.
Proud sponsor of this forum

I'm not sure, but it sounds like Vin's are recessive.
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Chad Bachman

I believe that Vin's line of Leucistic is co-dominant also with the hets looking sort of subtle like the fireballs. It sounds to me like they are all recessive, even the little I've heard about the Kahl and NERD lines.

ARGH! I've got to do a better job of proofing my posts:

I believe that Vin's line of Leucistic is co-dominant also with the hets looking sort of subtle like the fireballs. It sounds to me like they are all CO-DOMINANT (NOT recessive), even the little I've heard about the Kahl and NERD lines.

NERD posted pics of a leucistic female with eggs this year. Someone mentioned seeing babies at a show (I can't remember if there where pictures) and I got the idea from that post that the leucy was bred to a spider and that babies did hatch and there appeared to be a visible leucy het thing going on as well.

I also think I've read that Peter Kahl may have produced babies more than once from his leucistic female. I don't think I've ever seen any pictures but I also got the idea that line appeared to be some sort of co-dominant thing.

So, there is a precedence for female leucistics of at least some lines to be fertile. I would expect the captive bred males (RDR) to be breeding machines this next year so we shouldn't be in doubt much longer. There is always a potential for a problem until proven otherwise but I really haven't read anything to make me believe there are any problems with the leucistics. I think they are just too new to have much of a public track record yet.

Oh, I almost forgot, there was a male called Snoopy that supposedly produced visible hets before perhaps dieing. I’ve seen very little information on him or what happened to him but it does sound like he was fertile.

I've never seen anybody say there is 100% no chance of a super spider. Do you really think the "Big Boys" will tell you everything they know?
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Chad Bachman

What if there is a super...but it just isn't visible. I believe this is what boa hypos are (i may be wrong, it's been a while)...you don't know whether or not you have a super until you breed him/her. So there may be supers out there, but no one will know until they are bred.

Who knows...not me!

matt

Looks remarkably different than regular Salmons.

And really, this is the same thing that was discussed in reply #2 of this very thread. This is what we mean by "Homozygous Spider". Its the SAME THING.

I would argue that if the term "super" must be used (doesn't seem likely we can get rid of it now) it should only be used for mutations where the homozygous form looks different than the heterozygous form. If it turns out that homozygous spiders look the same as heterozygous ones then I think they should be called "homozygous spiders" and not "super spiders". Not up to me but that's my vote.

I invested in a female spider recently. With the very small collection I had, 1.1 het albinos, 1.1 pastels, and 0.1 spider, I went for the female instead of the male. Is there a super spider, I hope so but doubt it. I think it's like the arabesque boa. I just hope that crosses between higher end codoms/doms will be awesome. I think this is one way the female will surpass the male in price. Mojave spider, cinnamon spider, pinstripe spider..... Am I right on this?

I really hope that breeders start to hold back their females and I hope the direction of spiders goes North with the production of different morphs.

I know there aren't any supers but it's only a matter of time till we treat the value the female spider like the female pastel. (As you can see, I'm in favor of the female spider. LOL).

I must say that the spider has dropped dramatically in price over the last 2 years. Is this due because of all the spiders being produced or ???

Thanks for repsonding everyone.

STRIKE************HOLD BACK YOUR FEMALES****************LOL

Michael Ibanez

When spiders are less than recessive morphs (likely to eventually happen due to the quicker reproduction of a dominant type mutation) then I would expect female spiders to be closer in value to males. At that point you might be tempted to get a group of female spiders and use more expensive males on them rather than the current situation where you use a male spider on less expensive females of other morphs. The down side is that if there are ever only het spiders then all those female spiders would need to at least carry other genes to make the combos where as a single spider het for whatever male can already make combos with females of other morphs. I guess the only way I can see female spiders being more than males again is if a homozygous spider is proven so you know the female spiders are essential to producing homozygous spiders.

Given the current discount for female spiders I might be tempted to make my first spider a female whenever I can finally afford one but it will be a hard choice since the male's might be the same price the next year and mature about the same time and be able to breed my normal females.