Confused about genetics.

BlackRose · #1 (**permalink**) 09-04-2008, 07:13 PM

I wanted to maybe breed my leos in the future and I have been reading up on it alot. I understand alot of stuff about the temps, incubating, determing the sex by temps etc, but Im not too good at the genetics bit lol, which I see as somewhat important to the whole matter!

I dont want to bombard myself with new info cos It wont be for years, but wanted to get abit of a head start.
I am getting a normal adult female Monday and she is het for patternless , and so I was told I can breed her with a patternless male.
I know all about the chances and percentages etc as Ive read up on it, and I know all leos carry the normal gene to a certain extent dont they, cos they have all come from normal.
So in that cas can an morph be bred with any other morph, nomatter what it is? Somone, Im sure, told me this.
I want a few different morphs, and may expand my group in the future when I have even more room, but for the forseeable future want to stick with two females and one male when I do begin breeding in some years time.
So I will get this female Monday, and soon as I can I will get her a female friend (same size). I want to get a morph I want as they will all be a pet first, not just breeders, and I want a really pretty one.
I cant decide what I would like though.
I like the bell (something?) morph for the female friend.
I would maybe like a mack snow or jungle for the male. I like all these alot, and the the mack snow would possibly be my favourite out of them all so Id probably choose that.
So can I choose anything I like and be able to breed it with anything else?
So if I have this normal, and also a mack snow female then say, and later on got a jungle would that work out?
What am I likely to get out of it?
And do mack snows, jungles and bells go for alot? And are they rare?
These are just wonderings in case I do, as I would like to know.
BTW, I know all about extra calcium for the female aswell as the male, and what breeding involves, and the breeding weights. I know about certain things that can happen naturally to a female during the act of mating.

Ssthisto · #2 (**permalink**) 09-04-2008, 08:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackRose

I am getting a normal adult female Monday and she is het for patternless , and so I was told I can breed her with a patternless male.

Yes. If you breed her to a patternless it means you'll get a percentage of patternless babies. The others will be normals who are guaranteed to carry Patternless.

Quote:

and I know all leos carry the normal gene to a certain extent dont they, cos they have all come from normal.

Well.... sort of. A Patternless leopard gecko doesn't carry a "normal not-patternless" gene. It can't make "normal" if you breed it to another Patternless.

Quote:

So in that cas can an morph be bred with any other morph, nomatter what it is? Somone, Im sure, told me this.

Yes, you can breed any morph of leopard gecko to any other morph of leopard gecko... but you're not guaranteed to get VISUAL morph babies unless you pick the right morphs!

Genes come in pairs like seats on a train. Each pair of seats is reserved for a specific trait - so there might be the "patternless family's seats" and the "Tremper Albino family's seats". Now, if you cross a Patternless to a Tremper Albino, the Patternless has "normal Not-Tremper-Albino" genes in the Tremper Albino Family seats; it has "patternless" genes in both of the Patternless Family seats. The Tremper Albino has "normal-not-patternless" genes in the Patternless Family seats, and has "Tremper Albino" genes in the Tremper Albino Family seats.

Now each baby inherits one half of each pair from Mum, and one half of each pair from Dad. If Dad's the Patternless, he's going to give each baby a Patternless gene to sit in the Patternless family seat and a "normal-not-Tremper-Albino" gene to sit in the Albino family seat. Mum's going to give a "normal-not-patternless" gene to sit in the Patternless family seat, and a Tremper Albino gene to sit in the Albino family seat.

And because it takes both seats having Patternless in them to make a patternless, you won't get visual patternless - you get patternless carriers.
It also takes both seats having Albino in them to make an albino - so you won't get visual albinos either, you'll get albino carriers.

Quote:

I like the bell (something?) morph for the female friend.

Don't forget quarantine - they'll need to be housed separately for a couple of months at least to make sure the new one is healthy.

Bell Albinos are very pretty - they're not the same as Tremper Albinos, and they're often more expensive.

Quote:

I would maybe like a mack snow or jungle for the male. I like all these alot, and the the mack snow would possibly be my favourite out of them all so Id probably choose that.

Mack snow will have more predictable breeding results. In order to get a Mack Snow one and only one seat of the "Mack Snow" family should be filled with "Mack Snow" - the other one is filled with "normal-not-mack-snow".

Quote:

So if I have this normal, and also a mack snow female then say, and later on got a jungle would that work out?
What am I likely to get out of it?

(remember the guidelines below are averages over thousands of eggs, and EACH egg has the chance of being one or the other.)
Mack snow cross normal = 50% chance Mack Snow and 50% chance Normal.
Mack Snow cross Bell Albino = 50% chance mack snow carrying Bell Albino, 50% chance normal carrying Bell albino.
Mack Snow cross Mack Snow = 25% chance Normal, 50% chance Mack Snow, 25% chance Super Snow.
Mack Snow cross Jungle = 50% chance Mack Snow which might show odd patterning, 50% chance normal which might show odd patterning.

Quote:

And do mack snows, jungles and bells go for alot? And are they rare?

Macks aren't that rare - about £50 nowadays, sometimes less.
Jungles ... not my thing, not sure what they go for.
Bell Albinos are rarer, and they're more expensive. Last one I saw was £80.

Harrison · #3 (**permalink**) 15-04-2008, 08:44 PM

"You will get a percentage of..." is a misleading statement. Watch for that. If you are told "75% chance normal, 25% chance patternless" or something similar, it doesn't actually mean that 75% of the babies will be normal. It actually means that when each hatchling as an individual has a 75% chance of being normal. If you were to then get a patternless (which I've said is 25% in this fictional example), this doesn't mean that there is even more chance for the rest to be normal. Each hatchling goes through the process as an individual and if they all had the same mother and father, then the odds will be the same for them all.

Because of the way that odds work out, you may get 75% of one and 25% of the other, as predicted. But only because the individuals go through this. There is nothing stopping you from having all of one morph etc. You cannot predict the percentages of how many hatchlings will be whatever. You can only predict the chances for the individuals themselves.

Harrison · #4 (**permalink**) 16-04-2008, 07:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harrison

"You will get a percentage of..." is a misleading statement. Watch for that. If you are told "75% chance normal, 25% chance patternless" or something similar, it doesn't actually mean that 75% of the babies will be normal. It actually means that when each hatchling as an individual has a 75% chance of being normal. If you were to then get a patternless (which I've said is 25% in this fictional example), this doesn't mean that there is even more chance for the rest to be normal. Each hatchling goes through the process as an individual and if they all had the same mother and father, then the odds will be the same for them all.

Because of the way that odds work out, you may get 75% of one and 25% of the other, as predicted. But only because the individuals go through this. There is nothing stopping you from having all of one morph etc. You cannot predict the percentages of how many hatchlings will be whatever. You can only predict the chances for the individuals themselves.

Just thought of a simpler way to explain this.

A child has a 50/50 chance of being male or female. So it's 50% chance of being male and a 50% chance of being female. So if you have four children, a lot of advice I see written about genetics seems to suggest you will have two girls and two boys. I'm sure you know someone with 3-4 children all of one sex. I know many people with lots of one sex and none of the other. This is because the 50% chances are for the individuals themselves. A child has a 50/50 chance of being male or female. And as I said earlier, if a female child is born, this does not increase the chances of a male being born next. The whole thing starts all over again for each child.

Ssthisto · #5 (**permalink**) 16-04-2008, 08:25 AM

The percentages are generally accurate over a large ENOUGH sample size, however... I think there's something like 51% female humans in Britain and 49% male (and the deviation is due to the longer average lifespan of women and a slightly higher rate of male infant mortality).

If you had a thousand offspring from Mack Snow to Mack Snow pairings, you'd probably expect around 250 of them to be normals, around 250 to be Super Snows and around 500 to be Mack Snows.

But yes, a single clutch isn't going to pay attention to statistics because it's not a large enough sample size.

Harrison · #6 (**permalink**) 16-04-2008, 05:37 PM

I thought I would mention it because the choice of words can be misleading to people new to genetics or breeding and generally, these people would not be breeding thousands of animals when they are starting out. Strictly speaking, the individual's statistics can be estimated.

Ssthisto, is very correct. Because of the way odds work, a large enough sample size tends to be similar to the odds for the individuals more often than not (not a sure thing though). But I just thought I'd bring it up for the people breeding for the first time and getting a small clutch and wondering why the numbers aren't adding up.

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