GENETICS PART 2

Let's move on to the expression of two traits in one animal. It might seem as though each animal can only express one trait but that is not the case, there are many traits that may all be expressed in a single animal. How? This can be done because the various traits are each linked to there own set of alleles, making it possible to have present many different traits in one animal.

Since we have already discussed the inheritance of albinism I will keep that as one of the traits that we work with and to that we add the pattern characteristic blizzard. In this pairing our goal will be to produce albino blizzards or Blazing Blizzards as they are better known. To begin we will pair a blizzard female (AAbb) to an albino male (aaBB). The 'a' signifying the albino gene and the 'b' signifying the blizzard gene. You will first use a punnett square to represent each of the two animals to be bred.

	A	A
b	Ab	Ab
b	Ab	Ab

This punnett square represents the genetics of a female blizzard with 'normal' color.

	a	a
B	aB	aB
B	aB	aB

This punnett square represents the genetic of a male albino with a 'normal' pattern.

Now what do you get when you breed these two animals together? Let's see, now that we are working with multiple traits, our punnett square will have to be larger so that everything can be represented and no alleles are left out.

	aB	aB	aB	aB
Ab	AaBb	AaBb	AaBb	AaBb
Ab	AaBb	AaBb	AaBb	AaBb
Ab	AaBb	AaBb	AaBb	AaBb
Ab	AaBb	AaBb	AaBb	AaBb

The breeding of the albino male to the female blizzard has produced all double het animals, meaning they carry the genes of both recessive traits. They are all visually normal at this point.

We will now take a male and a female offspring from the above breeding and breed them to each other.

	AB	Ab	aB	ab
AB	AABB	AABb	AaBB	AaBb
Ab	AABb	AAbb	AaBb	Aabb
aB	AaBB	AaBb	aaBB	aaBb
ab	AaBb	Aabb	aaBb	aabb

Don't worry it's not as bad as it looks, take it one at a time.

AABB= normal for both traits 1:16

AABb= normal color, het for blizzard 2:16

AAbb= normal colored blizzard 1:16

AaBB= het for albino, normal pattern 2:16

AaBb= het for both traits (double het) 4:16

Aabb= het for albino, blizzard 2:16

aaBB= albino, normal pattern 1:16

aaBb= albino, het for blizzard 2:16

The one we were trying to get! aabb= albino blizzard, or Blazing Blizzard 1:16

So where does that leave us now?

We will have one Blazing Blizzard, albino blizzard.

We will have 3 blizzards that are 66% het for albino (blazing blizzard).

We will have 3 albinos that are 66% het for blizzard (blazing blizzard).

We will have 9 66% double het for blazing blizzard.

The percentages here are determined the same way they were on the first genetics page. Because 2 out of the 3 blizzards are het for albino they are 66% hets, the same goes for the albino het blizzards. For the double hets the same is true 4 of the 6 het for albinos are also het for blizzard giving them a 66% chance of being a double het.

We will be adding more genetic material shortly to more thoroughly cover the information provided thus far and to discuss the effects of co-dominant traits

Send mail to eereptiles@comcast.net with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2005 Exotic Encounter Reptiles Last modified: 12/30/11

Send mail to eereptiles@comcast.net with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2005 Exotic Encounter Reptiles
Last modified: 12/30/11