Calling those who know their herp genetics!

[Paperdaisies]

Hi there all, I've got a few questions about genetics. I'm not a breeder but am interested in the topic and have been reading and trying to educate myself. Some of it is a little confusing to me. So I was wondering if some of you that are more experienced with the topic could clarify.

Please feel free to correct me wherever I'm wrong!!

So I understand about dominant traits and recessive traits. (AA being a normal animal and aa showing the visual genetic mutation). So say you bred a normal beardie with say, a marketed leucistic (just for example). The normal animal would be AA and the Leucistic would be aa right? So we'd have this?

So that means you'd have 4 normal looking animals that are 50% het for the mutation? If that's right and you bred one of those babies with the original parent (I know cross breeding is bad but just to make my point haha), then you'd get this?

meaning that you had 2 normal looking babies that were 50% het for the desired mutation and 2 babies who visually had the mutation??

and if you bred one of THOSE babies with the original parent would you then get this?

meaning that ALL babies had the visual mutation?

Or am I way off?

And also, if you bred two animals that were both "aa" meaning they both had a visual mutation, does it have to be the same mutation to pass it along? Like what if you bred a sunburst with a citrus? Would some be like the mother and some be like the father? Or would they all be normal because they didn't carry the same recessive genes?

I think the subject is fascinating and hope some of you can help me figure it out or straighten me out! :lol:

 

[TheWolfmanTom]

Hi,
I have found this site to be a great resource to genetics.
http://www.mbdragons.eu/en/genetica.html

 

[greathouseFarm]

As a fellow cycling enthusiast I love the names of your beardies! Read over that excellent link that Tom gave you and if you still have more specific questions than definitely post it here. I think the main thing you will discover is that the names of the color morphs are there to confuse you! :wink: Citrus, Tangerine, Crimson, Blood... etc etc etc... they are all basically descriptive names that notate a particular bloodline or breeder who orginated the "name"

Genetically and currently we mainly deal with
Hypomelanictic (recessive)
Translucent (recessive)
American Leather (recessive) and
Italian or American Smoothie (Co-Dominant)
Other than that any newer morphs have not been genetically proven. And while a true Luecistic does exist in other animals with beardies it is just used to describe an extremely white dragon. That's my version in a nutshell that I think is easy to understand (I teach 9 yr olds this stuff) I hope I didn't miss anything.

 

[greathouseFarm]

Oh yeah and on your pundit squares. Your basically working them right but as far as percentages go they are probable numbers. Meaning approximately 50% of those offspring will carry the gene and the other 50% wont but since they are all carriers (Aa) not visuals (aa) you don't know which ones are so you have to give figure out what those % are.

 

[chrisallen]

Hi there all, I've got a few questions about genetics. I'm not a breeder but am interested in the topic and have been reading and trying to educate myself. Some of it is a little confusing to me. So I was wondering if some of you that are more experienced with the topic could clarify.

Please feel free to correct me wherever I'm wrong!!

So I understand about dominant traits and recessive traits. (AA being a normal animal and aa showing the visual genetic mutation). So say you bred a normal beardie with say, a marketed leucistic (just for example). The normal animal would be AA and the Leucistic would be aa right? So we'd have this?

So that means you'd have 4 normal looking animals that are 50% het for the mutation? If that's right and you bred one of those babies with the original parent (I know cross breeding is bad but just to make my point haha), then you'd get this?

meaning that you had 2 normal looking babies that were 50% het for the desired mutation and 2 babies who visually had the mutation??

and if you bred one of THOSE babies with the original parent would you then get this?

meaning that ALL babies had the visual mutation?

Or am I way off?

And also, if you bred two animals that were both "aa" meaning they both had a visual mutation, does it have to be the same mutation to pass it along? Like what if you bred a sunburst with a citrus? Would some be like the mother and some be like the father? Or would they all be normal because they didn't carry the same recessive genes?

I think the subject is fascinating and hope some of you can help me figure it out or straighten me out! :lol:

On the first Punnett square you have on the left(AA the visual morph, lets use for this example a hypo). On the top you have a normal dragon(aa). All the babies come out Aa, which would mean you have 100% het babies. All of the babies in that cross will appear normal, but carry the hypo gene.
In the second square, you have on the left a het hypo(Aa) x a normal (aa). In that case het x normal would give you half hets, half normals. Being there is no way to tell which is which, they are sold as 50% possible hets. If for this example you used aa as the hypo, and Aa as a het....a hypo x het hypo cross would give you half hypo and the other half would be 100% hets.
In the next square you have a normal x normal=all normal. If you use aa though as the hypo or visual, you would get all hypos....hypo x hypo = all hypo. Your last question concerning the colors really doesn't pertain to the morphs, as they are just colors...but if you were talking morphs for example, if you bred a hypo x translucent(both are recessive genes) you would get all 100% double hets, no babies would exhibit either the hypo or trans, but they would all carry both. If you have more questions, ask away.....

 

[greathouseFarm]

I hope I am not wrong but the way I was taught genetics is that a Capital letter indicates the dominant gene and the recessive is with a lower case. So I have always worked my pundit squares opposite of you Chris. Of course you would get the same outcome but I just wanted to clarify why I called (aa) the visual morph. Anyway it does seem counter intuitive but that's the way we did it in my genetics class. Otherwise when you work more complicated pundit squares they would make no sense. Lucky for us Beardie genetics aren't as complex as say cats!

 

[chrisallen]

It's just habit of me using the capital as the recessive, the lower case as the wild type/normal.
Not sure what you mean as far as using the capital for the dominant, lower case for recessive though?

 

[chrisallen]

I'll just clarify to make it easier, but the assumptions the op made are not right.

Using aa as the leucy and AA as the normal.

First Punnett sq. shows results for leucy x normal being all babies would be 100% hets.

Second sq. shows results for leucy x het being 50% being leucistic(you were right here), but the other half are 100% hets.

Third sq. shows results for leucy x leucy all being leucy.

I hope that was easier, and sorry if I added confusion with my first post(thats why I tried explaining your way and mine, either way the percentages come out the same as long as you know what stands for what), lol.

 

[greathouseFarm]

Oh geez its late at night... I just added to the confusion too... i meant to say the Normal not the Dominant. I was thinking about something else at the same time... I found that with cats and rabbits where you have so many variations to deal with that working pundit squares over and over for different circumstances is very helpful. The old practice makes perfect I guess...

 

[Paperdaisies]

Thanks for the replies! This is actually really helpful and I'm learning a lot