We had some more really cool stuff going on lately here at Vital Exotics! Last week we hatched out the first USA CBB Black Dragon! The breeding was a male pure Black Dragon bred to a female pure Black Dragon. The small clutch was nested very well, but only one egg was fertilized and made the 7 month incubation process. I have been fortunate enough to have 2 other pure Black Dragon clutches laid recently, so watch for more Black Dragons to hatch this October & November.
This one is so amazing!
We also hatched out a clutch from a CBB “Reptile Guru Line” High Yellow male bred to a female pure Black Dragon! The expectations for the results of this clutch have been very anticipated across the world, as no one has ever documented this breeding in captivity before, and below you can see the results….Some amazing looking hatchlings that should prove out based on this and other data and information to be 100% Het Black Dragon! I will obviously continue working with these offspring to prove this out as soon as possible.
Here is a some info on the Black Dragons and how the Black gene seems to work:
The V.s komaini (Black Dragon) is no longer recognized as a subspecies of Varanus salvator, as yrs ago it was re-classified as a melanistic version of V. salvator macromaculatus. It has been discovered that the melanistic "komaini" animals apparently live alongside normal looking V. salvator macromaculatus where they are found. This also supports Koch et al.'s (2007) findings that "komaini" is an invalid taxon, and should be grouped together with V. salvator macromaculatus. This is also supported by noting that if the “Black” color trait or mutation was a 'locale' or a subspecies, you would see a blending of phenotypic traits, like what we see in the High Yellow V. s marmoratus X V. s macromaculatus “Reptile Guru High Yellow” crosses and similar crosses of different proven locality traits in Salvators and other reptiles.
We do know that breeding Black Dragon to Black Dragon makes all Black Dragons, which proves that the Black trait is genetically transferable, and if it were an intergrade/locality color mutation like some originally thought, we would have seen a "blending" of traits such as a Gray or really dark animal with some pattern but no bright yellow banding or ocelli (yellow spots). So as with many melanistic (black) reptiles, it is determined that, based on this information and other data, that the Black color mutation is a simple recessive trait.
With this information in mind….breeding 100% Het to 100% Het should produce Black Dragons for 25% of the clutch on average, the rest of the clutch will appear normal or High Yellow and have a 66% chance of carring the heterozygous form of the Black Dragon gene.
Kinda wish I had picked up a CBB water with my import of retics from you guys 
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