Reptile & Amphibian Forums

For example, how can you tell this difference in the spider? Is the only way to breed it out and see what you get? Meaning if you have two hypo spiders, the offspring will all be spiders whereas if you have a hypo and het spider you'll get spiders and normals? I may have the combos confused but whats the deal?

Thanks

A homo spider will create all spiders no matter what it's paired with. If you pair it with a het spider you will get a combo of het and homo spiders and if paired with a normal you will get het spiders.
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Tosha

"One of these days i am going to wake up..look around...and realize my place looks more like "Ace Venturas"s than my own." Coldthumb

7.33.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and gang)
1.0.0 Angolan Python (Skywalker)
0.0.1 Green Tree Python
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope John Paul)
2.2.1 Fish (1,2,3,4)
0.0.0 Pool skimmer rescues for this season

so the only way to tell the difference is to breed them out. there are no visual distinctions at all?

Generally speaking there is nothing visual on a Heterozygous animal either...you usually have to breed to prove it. In Balls we are lucky to have all of these visual Hets. Dominats you have to breed it to prove it and co doms have a super form.
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Michael Enriquez

That is actually how we would prove if spider is completely dominant - if one can be proven homozygous by only producing a large number of spiders and never any normals and is the same in all other ways as the heterozygous spiders that only average half spiders with a normal.

If spider is eventually proven completely dominant then you could also know that you have a homozygous spider if both of it's parents where proven homozygous. There would be no non spider copies of the gene for either parent to give. The spiders from het spider X het spider would be 33% chance homozygous spiders - sort of the compliment of the 66% chance hets from breeding two recessive hets together.

I've heard a rumor of a proven homozygous spider and there ought to be some by now but can only speculate as to why one wouldn't be publicized if it actually exists.

theoretically - yes - there is no difference in the phenotype of the homo and het spiders. So you'd have to breed them to find out. However - to my knowledge I don't think anyone has produced a Homo Spider yet (or at least no one has shared it). I would have expected to see some by this year but so far haven't. Anyone else??
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Tosha

"One of these days i am going to wake up..look around...and realize my place looks more like "Ace Venturas"s than my own." Coldthumb

7.33.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and gang)
1.0.0 Angolan Python (Skywalker)
0.0.1 Green Tree Python
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope John Paul)
2.2.1 Fish (1,2,3,4)
0.0.0 Pool skimmer rescues for this season

so even though NERD produced spiders back in 1999, no one has proven their spider to be homo? in theory, there should be homo spiders floating around. do you think it's a matter that no one has proven it yet or it's just simply to hard to tell if you have one? so when people are selling spiders, they are simply pricing hets and homos the same. one would think that a homo spider would command a higher price than a het. so maybe i should purchase one and keep my fingers crossed hoping it's hypo. any thoughts?

This thread got off on a wrong foot using "hypo" incorrectly in place of "homozygous" (or homo for short).

Hypo is usually short for hypomelanistic and is a mutation also called ghost.

Homozygous means having a matched set of genes as in two spider mutant versions of the gene at the spider location. Heterozygous is having an unmatched pair of genes as in having one spider mutant version and one normal version of the gene at the spider location. The vast majority, if not all, spider phenotypes seen so far have been the heterozygous genotype for the spider gene. The question is if there are any homozygous spider genotypes which got the spider gene from both parents and what they would look like and hence what mutation type spider should be classified as.

I think Randy previously posted the best explanation as to why we don't see any Homo Spiders (I've posted it below). If they were produced - yes you'd know about it, and it would cost more - personally I think its either of the possibility of the homo lethal gene (explained by Randy) and people more interested in breeding spider x normal to produce more spiders and spider x pastel for bumblebees and find new things they can do with the morph.

Anyway - here is Randy's explanation:

Posted by: Randy Remington at Sun Apr 3 10:11:37 2005 [ Email Message ]

There really just isn't much public information available on what is going on with spider but hopefully enough breedings will be done this year by breeders who tend to post results that we can start to sort the possibilities out.

It seems to me that it might have been as long as two hatching seasons ago that NERD posted that they had done "enough" spider X spider breedings to be confident that there wasn't a visibly different homozygous spider. Just by odds, about 1/4 of the clutch from breeding a pair of the heterozygous spiders we are used to seeing together should be homozygous spider. If the spider mutation is completely dominant then these homozygous spiders would have the same spider phenotype (appearance) as the heterozygous spiders but when you bred homozygous spider X normal you would get 100% heterozygous spiders.

The assumption seems to be that if a visibly different looking homozygous spider hasn't been seen in all the spider X spider breedings so far then it must be because they look just like the regular heterozygous spiders (i.e. spider is completely dominant). However, until a homozygous spider is confirmed by producing only spiders in a lot of breedings (preferably to normals for spider) then we really don't know for sure.

Last summer there where two public (i.e. posted) cases of relatively small breeders who had potential homozygous spiders that produced initial clutches of all spiders but then produced some normals in later clutches showing that they weren’t homozygous spiders after all (assuming pathogenesis and sperm storage aren't a much bigger problem than we expect). Public information on how many potential homozygous spiders have been bred is hard to come by. There are even rumors that someone has a proven homozygous spider but for some reason doesn't want to come public with it.

Without solid information on the breeding results of potential homozygous spiders I can't really weigh which theory is more likely - that spider is completely dominant or that it's a homozygous lethal gene and no homozygous spiders will ever be produced. If it is homozygous lethal, it doesn't necessarily mean anything bad about the heterozygous spiders we have seen so far which by all accounts tend to grow quickly and breed early. It only means that if a homozygous spider isn't possible we will eventually give up trying to produce one and not bother breeding spider X spider, only spider X other morphs/normals.
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Tosha

"One of these days i am going to wake up..look around...and realize my place looks more like "Ace Venturas"s than my own." Coldthumb

7.33.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and gang)
1.0.0 Angolan Python (Skywalker)
0.0.1 Green Tree Python
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope John Paul)
2.2.1 Fish (1,2,3,4)
0.0.0 Pool skimmer rescues for this season

"so even though NERD produced spiders back in 1999, no one has proven their spider to be homo? in theory, there should be homo spiders floating around. do you think it's a matter that no one has proven it yet or it's just simply to hard to tell if you have one? so when people are selling spiders, they are simply pricing hets and homos the same. one would think that a homo spider would command a higher price than a het. so maybe i should purchase one and keep my fingers crossed hoping it's hypo. any thoughts?"

Last year NERD advertised a few Spiders for sale. One was listed as coming from a Spider x Spider breeding and it was priced around $1000 more than the others. On the whole, I doubt too many people are breeding Spider x Spider anymore. Everything for sale today is probably Spider x Normal.

Chris
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mean people suck