please help me id this hatchlings

[Theinfidel]

I feed adult crickets to my around 3 week old hatchlings and their doing perfect but sometimes i'll pluck out the hind legs.

 

[M_surinamensis]

Having been thoroughly chastised, I will go spend some time reading up on tyrosinase, and review my chromatophores and melanocytes. It couldn't hurt, I'm sure...

No chastisement intended. Just a bit of clarification.

It's tremendously interesting stuff... problem is that there's really nobody who has both the ambition and the finances to get down to analyzing the details of every mutation of color and pattern that the pet industry produces. So I can wave my hand and talk about generalities and possibilities but to the best of my current knowledge, there's nobody who can identify exactly what each such mutation actually does on a cellular or chemical level.*

Take the three albino strains as an example. We know they're incompatible. We know they're tyrosinase positive, so there's a portion of the normal process which functions. Are they incompatible because they interrupt the normal pigment function at different times during the process? Do they function in similar ways but are mutations at different loci? Is it a change in the pigment that is produced (causing the normal cells to be incompatible) or a change to the structure or function of the melanophore (that prevents normal pigment from going/remaining where it is supposed to)? Is something not being synthesized properly, is some vital cell type completely absent, is it a side effect of a seemingly unrelated mutation (like an issue with vitamin absorption/synthesis)?

A little lab equipment and a biochemistry background could sort it out but there's no money for it. The only people who might be invested enough to back it are pet industry breeders and even there it's a lot more cost effective to simply try test breedings when they've got a question. Plus at this point there are... what, a couple dozen basic mutations and line bred traits known to occur in the species? And that's before combinations are even brought into it. It'd be neat to have all that information, so breeders could more accurately predict results from each pairing but... well, it's cheaper and potentially even faster to just try it to see what happens.

Still, combinations of mutations which produce the same ultimate effect, or similar appearances, can sometimes be brought together in surprising combinations if the mutations do something different in the process. Like an albino form where melanin doesn't go where it's supposed to combined with a hypomelanistic mutation that's a result of fewer than normal or low-functioning melanophores. Or might produce no appreciable effect, again depending on exactly what each one does and when it does it. Some just over-write others.

I'm hoping that the equipment gets cheaper, the background required to do the work gets more widespread and some college kids who keep herps in their dorm room do all the work as thesis projects. Then they can come back here and share it with me, in appreciation for... how I... answered their question about... something?

... I should really start being a lot nicer to younger herpers.

*much less a genetic one beyond method of transmission.

 

[lillith]

I wasn't really chastised, I was being cheeky.

THANK YOU for your information, you're as much fun to read as Discover, National Geographic, and Scientific American for me (and I genuinely enjoy that kind of dorky stuff, so I mean it.) Talk loci and alleles to me, oh, yeah!

I know I don't know everything, that's more than half the fun here. :main_yes:

So, there are no genomics projects for leos, hmm? Isn't there a genomics lab somewhere we could convince to study reptile vs. mammalian metaobolism using the ever-so-common leo? I know Texas A&M was studying something with leos, I don't remember if we ever heard back from that or if the study just isn't finished yet...if I remember correctly this was the enigma study. And then there's the crypto study. At least we have a precedent for leos as lab animals. No that's not a terribly happy thought, but we might use it in our favor.