Newbie Breeders!l in search of some assistance

[Nismo89]

^ ^
Very informative I always get screwed up with recessives. I knew the pastel co-dom thing since thats what I have and is my project but everything else still confuses me to some point but I'm doing my best to learn. World of Ball Pythons is an awesome site for BP morphs and genetics though and a big help as well.

[Nismo89]

I would refuse a sale if I knew the person wouldn't properly care for it and when I do have babies I will do just that if need be. I'm not in it to produce what will bring the most money or what will sell the fastest. I'm in it to produce the morphs I want in my collection and be able to have a nice size collection that pays for the feedings and supplies by selling some babies every year. I'm also in it just for the experience of being able to raise something up from an egg to an adult.

[millertime89]

if I actually start breeding (maybe in a year or two) I'll also refuse sells to people that don't seem to be able to care for the species.
I need to dig deeper into retic genetics as those are the ones that interest me the most.

[Nismo89]

I've always loved the bee morph variations in BP so thats what I'm looking to produce and I would also love a lemon blast someday.

[Strutter769]

Originally Posted by blindfireak40

There are several different modes of inheritance for snake (and most animal) genetics.

1) Simple Recessive: This is the easiest to understand. There are two "alleles", Dominant (or Normal, A for example) and recessive (a, in this case). The animal could be "Homozygous Normal" which means the genetic pattern at that "locus" would be "AA". Then they could be "Heterozygous for a" which means that the pattern would be "Aa", even though they look "Normal" (this is your "het Albino"). Finally, they could be "a", in which case they actually show whatever gene you're breeding for (They're actually albino) with the genetic pattern "aa".

2) Dominant: This works the same as Recessive, but in the OPPOSITE direction. An example would be the Tessera pattern mutation in corn snakes, where the ABNORMAL pattern dominates the normal one. In this case, "TT" and "Tt" look the same; both have the Tessera pattern. Only "tt" would appear normal.

3) Codominant: This is where a TON of your ball python morphs come in. Typically speaking, there are THREE "phenotypes" (outward appearances) in this case. There is the normal ("AA"), then the "het" form ("Aa") and then the "Super" form ("aa", homozygous a). All three are visually distinct from each other. An example of this would be the Pastel complex. PP= Normal, Pp= Pastel, pp= Super Pastel.

Those are the three basic methods of inheritance for genetics, and can be combined at one locus (to make things REALLY tricky). An example is the Amelanistic/Ultra locus in Corn Snakes. Amelanistic and Ultra are both simple recessive genes that are CODOMINANT with each other. This means that if the snake can have 4 different appearances based on the single locus:

"Normal": NN (homo Normal), Na (het Amel), Nu (het ultra)

"Amelanistic" (Albino): aa (homo Amel, Albino)

"Ultra": uu (homo Ultra)

"Ultramel" (this is where the codominance comes in): au (it shares appearance traits with both Amel and Ultra)


Hopefully that helped a little bit!! PM me if you want to discuss it further or have any more questions!

Thanks, Sean! Very informative! Thank you.