Genetic Question

Hi everyone

Compliments of the season to you all and your families.

I was hoping you would be able to answer a mystery I have been experiencing every now and then over the past 5 Years.

Theoretically if I breed Homozygous Recessive × Homozygous Recessive both being the same gene then 100% of the offspring should be Homozygous of the same gene.

What I have experienced in Leopard Gecko's is that it happens often where 2 Visual parents don't give any visual babies but only 100% heterozygous for the gene.

This has occurred with 4 different Recessive genes already in my collection namely.

Blizzard
Murphy Patternless
Eclipse
Bell Albino

Any opinions on the above mentioned matter would be greatly appreciated.

I have search various books and Internet sites but haven't been able to find a clear cut answer to the subject.

Looking forward to everyones response.

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There were clutch mates.

Neither 1 of them is Bell Albino.

And in case someone might say different Albino genes but this is not the case as I have had the same happen with Murphy Patternless, Eclipse & Blizzard in separate occurrences.

Thanks



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It would probably be helpful to have, if possible, pictures of the parents and offspring in question (unless that runs to too many pictures). Is there any chance that there's been some confusion between blizzard and Murphy's patternless? It's been known to happen as well as albino strain mix-ups.

Aliza

I think it's much more likely you're having a problem with the stock rather than a genetic phenomenon. Mendelian genetics is pretty well studied and the chances of getting a hetero from two homos is next to nothing.

I agree with Aliza that there may be an issue with murphy's patternless and blizzard since they can look quite similar, and albino strains as well. I've found that homo eclipses can sometimes be really hard to tell if they are actually eclipses. But if you bred two eclipses, it's really safe to assume that you have an eclipse.

From your note in the picture one of your animals is het eclipse and the other is a radar (visual eclipse). Therefore you should expect 50% of the babies to be RADARS (visual eclipses) and 50% to be Bell albino het for eclipse (non-visuals). Both of those babies don't look albino to me so I would assume one of the parents is not a Bell albino. Pictures of the parents would help but if they are two different strains of albino it might be impossible to tell which is bell and which is a different strain visually.

The patternless traits are definitely recessive but are quite easily confused especially when mixed with other genes or together. I would assume this is the issue you're having with the MP and Blizzard traits.