Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So I have a pair of anerys - the female is a black morph (solid black blotches) and the male is more of a charcoal morph, both seem hypoxanthic (very little yellow). They are full siblings from the same clutch.

I put them together expecting 100% anery, she laid eggs, and the eggs hatched (pipped?) this morning, and of the ~20, 5 of them appear to be snows. How can that be? Does that mean they are both het for snow?

Well, I also put the male with one of my amel females. If he's het for snow, does this mean 50% of these offspring will be blizzards? I was expecting only normal phenotypes from this clutch, but have always wanted a blizzard.

This male:

was crossed with this female:

And produced 5 snows and 15 anery phenotypes. Does this mean about 10 of the anerys should be het for snow?

The male above was also crossed with this female:

I'd be surprised if she is a pure amel.

I think I might also cross him with this female:

which has more white (but appears to be frosted).

>>This male: ...

He looks more like a hypomelanistic than an ordinary anery. Notice how pale his blotches are, and "empty" in the centres. I think that he's a "ghost".
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tricia

n/p

You bred full siblings!? Why?
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Let there be Lizardz.
- Scott

>>You bred full siblings!? Why?

Why not?

Unless the parents are known to be carrying deleterous hidden genes, there's no reason why full siblings can't be bred to each other. It is an excellent means of determining what hidden genes the parent stock may be carrying (in this case, it proved that both are het for amelanism, a fact that was previously unknown to their owner). It is also the surest means of "fixing" rare traits, so that they may then be reliably bred into other lines.
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tricia

Does breeding sibling (or other blood relative) Corns not result in a snake with a shortened lifespan because of health problems? I know it does in other reptiles.
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Let there be Lizardz.
- Scott

Only after multiple generations of inbreeding does any deleterious effects show. If the parent animals are healthy, the offspring will likely be healthy, too. Even with humans, a brother/sister mating will most likely produce a completely healthy baby. Some form of inbreeding or linebreeding (father/daughter or mother/son) is necessary to get recessive genes to 'show'. The same mechanism that causes defects to appear is the same mechanism that we use to selectively breed for certain traits.

If there are some species where apparently a single generation of inbreeding produces defects, it could be is because the founding generation was not very large, and thus not a whole lot of genetic diversity to start out with, or there were multiple generations of inbreeding taking place beforehand.

I have heard of problems with bearded dragons (smaller babies, etc.) attributed to this sort of long-term breeding of related animals - a lot more than one generation has been inbred to produce all the outrageous reds and oranges that the high-end animals show, and I have heard that the entire US population of BDs came from a group of 100 or so? And no new blood is being introduced (well, legally), because they can't be exported from Australia - so that would make them more susceptible to genetic problems.

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-audri
Webpage/Pics

The genotype of your ghost male is hypomelanistic, anerythristic. He's also heterozygous amelanistic.

The genotype of your anerythristic female is anerythristic, heterozygous amelanistic. She may be heterozygous hypomelanistic, but I think it unlikely unless some of the babies came out looking like the sire.

That male mated to an amelanistic female would produce (statistically)
1) 1/2 normal looking babies that are heterozygous amelanistic, heterozygous anerythristic, heterozygous hypomelanistic.

2) 1/2 amelanistic babies that are also heterozygous anerythristic, heterozygous hypomelanistic.

This outcome assumes that the female just amelanistic and is not heterozygous for anerythristic or for hypomelanistic. If you get something other than amelanistics and normals, then we can get a better handle on her genetics.

There is only one way you could possibly get blizzard from this cross -- the male is charcoal instead of anerythristic, and the female is heterozygous charcoal. A snow is possible if the female is heterozygous anerythristic.

Hope this helps.

Paul Hollander

Yes, it helps a lot.

Looking over the offspring tonight, I noticed some of the anery phenotype ones had definitely solid black blotches, but some had blotches that faded to a dark grey in the middle.

It wasn't noticeable until I got them under decent light, and then it was plainly noticeable.

>>Looking over the offspring tonight, I noticed some of the anery phenotype ones had definitely solid black blotches, but some had blotches that faded to a dark grey in the middle.
>>
>>It wasn't noticeable until I got them under decent light ...

With the parents of this clutch being full sibs, and the father being hypomelanistic, I'd be willing to bet that the mother is het for hypo, and that 50% of your "anery " babies are ghosts. Also, without question, all the remaining babies are het hypo.
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tricia

>>Looking over the offspring tonight, I noticed some of the anery phenotype ones had definitely solid black blotches, but some had blotches that faded to a dark grey in the middle.
>>
>>It wasn't noticeable until I got them under decent light ...

With the parents of this clutch being full sibs, and the father being hypomelanistic, I'd be willing to bet that the mother is het for hypo, and that 50% of your "anery " babies are ghosts. Also, without question, all the remaining babies are het hypo.
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tricia