Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone. Why does a particular morph determine whether males of females are more expensive? For example, a male spider can sell for $5000 while a female sells for $3000. However when we look at Pastels, a male can sell for $1500 while a female sells for $2500. Pieds, males sell for $8000 and females sell for $6000. Why is this? I would have thought females would always be more expensive because they produce the eggs. Thanks for the help, I look forward to reading the answer.

Johan

Spiders are dominate therefore there is no super form (they only produce spiders and males can be bred to more females); Males will be more valuable. Pastels are codom and produce super pastels there for females would be more valuable as long as you have a male pastel. Pieds only produce pieds there for males are more valuable but female hets are more expensive than males for the same reason as pastels. I hope this makes sense and I hope I'm pretty close to the best explanation if not please correct me.

Louie

I think I understand what you are saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. Because a pastel is co-dom it when a pastel is bred to a normal, you will get normals and pastels. However when you breed a spider (male) to a normal you will always get spiders because the gene is dominant? Is this correct?

You would get Spiders and Normals. The difference is the Spider does not have a super form.

Pastel x Normal = Normal & Pastel
Pastel x Pastel = Normal, Pastel, & Super Pastel

Spider x Normal = Normal & Spider
Spider x Spider = Normal & Spider

Chris
-----
mean people suck

Ok, now I get it. Bummer that there is no super form of the spider. Spider morphs are pretty incredible looking. Albino Spider is cool but NERDS new Lesser Platty Spider is simply amazing. Thanks for the genetics lesson.

I understand the dominants and the codominants, but the Piebalds have always confused me. Any other simple recessive animal is more expensive with the female. Why are Piebalds so different?

Chris
-----
mean people suck

When a recessive morph is relatively new and expensive, the males are more valuable because people want to buy a male and breed it to a bunch of normal females to make a zillion hets, which are also valuable. But once the morph is more common, and cheaper, people would rather buy a male and a bunch of female visual morphs to make all visual morphs, so the females become more in demand and thus more valuable.

Not being a BP breeder (yet), I can't say if that is exactly what is going on here, but it is the usual economics of new recessive traits in most any species.