Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm looking for some "plain english" info on the genetics of leos. Info like what happens when you breed two of the same morph together or two different morphs together. Something to explain the lingo like "Het", "Recessive", "Allele". I checked out MorphDescription, there is a Gene section below the morph descriptions, but it was very technical. Everybody here seemd pretty knowledgable, so any info would help.
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- Jason

LEOS:
1.1 Hypos (Conan & Red Sonja)
0.0.2 Juvies (Dremel & Ryobi)

CATS:
2.0 Maine Coons (Sam & Tye)

FIANCÉE:
0.1 Tall Blonde (Christine)

Well, I'm not a very technical person so maybe I can help.

"Het" is short for "heterozygous" which means the gecko is carrying the gene but you can't tell by looking at it. For example: A gecko that is "het" for albino looks normal but can have albino babies if bred to another het or an albino.

"recsesive" refers to a trait that is also being carried by the gecko but is over shaddowed by a dominant trait. The normal phase is a dominant phase and over shaddows a lot of other traits. The recessive traits are ones like albino, patternless and blizzard. Basically, you can only get those morphs if the parents are het for those morphs or they are actually those morphs themselves (homozygous). Codominant is where the trait might or might not show. Like in the tremper giants- if you breed a giant to a normal, you can get giants and you can get normals, there are no true hets. (I hope that makes sense!)

Some morphs are line bred. This means there are no heterozygous or homozygous genes involved. Tangerine and snow are line bred morphs. In order to get the look you want you would have to selective breed the geckos. In other words pick the best males and females, breed them. Then take the best offspring and breed those, an so on.

I hope this helps to answer your questions!
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Emily

3.5.3 leopard geckos (Nelson, Zander, Zoe, Baby, Houdini, Munch, Gizmo, Zig-Zag, Beau, Daisy & Gus)
1.1 ferrets (Oliver and Delilah)
1. budgie (Max)
0.0.1 Ring neck Parakeet (Kiwi)
1.1 German Shepards (Jake and Abigail)

The Spotted Gecko
**Updated 11-09-04**

So if you have two leos that you breed, but don't know their recessive or het genes, will you figure that out by the babies that get produced? For example if you breed two normals that each have the albino het gene, and get albino babies, you know that the adults have the albino gene. Is that correct?

You were talking about line breeding. Does that just refer to continious breeding of generations of leos to get the patterns that you want. So you started off with partially snow leos (mostly whitegrey but not all) and breeded them and their offspring until you get a fully whitegrey leo?
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- Jason

LEOS:
1.1 Hypos (Conan & Red Sonja)
0.0.2 Juvies (Dremel & Ryobi)

CATS:
2.0 Maine Coons (Sam & Tye)

FIANCÉE:
0.1 Tall Blonde (Christine)

Leopard Gecko Genetic Information:

The word "het" is short for heterozygous. This means that the animal carries a recessive gene such as albino, blizzard, or patternless, but does not physically express it. When bred to another het of the same trait, some of the babies will express the trait. Here is the expected ratio when animals are bred together:

Albino x normal= 100% het offspring

Albino x het= 50% albino, 50% het offspring

Het x het= 25% albino, 50% het, 25% normal (since you can't tell a het from a normal by looking at them, all hets and normals from this breeding would be considered 66% possible hets)

Het x normal= 50% het, 50% normal (all "normal" looking babies are considered 50% possible hets)

so what happens when you breed albino to say s.h.t.c.t.? if the answer is het for albino,but would they look normal ?

then there babies to each other or back to there parents,
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carrotaildreams