Reptile & Amphibian Forums

ok lets say a clutch of 8 50% het albino eggs are layed obviously you dont know which ones are the hets,now if 4 eggs are fertile and 4 are not or die during incubation is that taken into consideration in nature, would the 4 actual offspring still theoretically have 2 het albinos in them or is it possible that the 4 hets died or best case scenario the 4 living offspring are the hets

same question revolving around codoms 8 eggs THEORETICALLY 4 pastel but what if 4 eggs are infertile or die b4 hatching will you still possibly end up with 2 pastel and 2 normal

im asking because it seems like peoples odds lately have been incredible to their favor with more pastels than normals and peoples 50% hets proving out i think thats great so im asking the ?

Good question.

The thing to remember is that the punnett square does not apply to the clutch as a whole, but rather to each individual egg. This means that even if six (6) of the eight (8) eggs are infertile, the remaining two (2) eggs each have a 50/50 chance at carrying the genetic mutation.

So...

If only two eggs are left, you may get one (1) morph and one (1) normal. Or you may get two (2) morphs. Or you may get two (2) normals.

Sound good?

Chris
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mean people suck

Place eight (8) pennies on a table. Remove four (4) pennies as these are the infertile eggs. Flip each of the remaining four (4) pennies.

Heads = Morph
Tails = Normal

What do you get?

Chris
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mean people suck

4 cent
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The Crawl Space

the percentages are ment to be looked at over the life time of the animal...its entire reproductive history.

Also...you will always hear about those happy people that get 9 co doms out of 10 eggs and hey look my 50% het proved out...but if you get 1 co dom out of 10 eggs or your 50% does not prove out...you would be a little bit upset and not ready to brag
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Michael Enriquez

Good point, there is a reporting bias toward good results.

It is always possible that there might be a hatch bias too. Someday we might find a morph where being het makes the egg more likely to die (or who knows, maybe even more likely to live but an improvement on nature seems less likely). I've not heard of any indication of any such thing in ball pythons yet but it’s a remote possibility to keep an eye out for.