Keep in mind im not a scientist. This is my knowledge from observation. I only have what iv observed to go by.
Selective breeding is a term you see getting thrown around a lot more these day in retics. You can go back 15 years and see me talking about using localities to make morphs look better.
I cant take credit for the idea. There were retic breeders working with localities long before me.
The idea of using super dwarfs and dwarfs for downsizing morphs was around before I was breeding retics.
It wasn't until years later that the idea really gained traction.
Which it was more of the market demanding manageable size retics, than it was retic breeders demanding people buy smaller retics.
Downsizing retics with smaller localities is without doubt the most common form of selective breeding we see in retics.
Its a form of polygenic selective breeding. As far as we know retics, like most animals have their size determined by more than one gene.
Retics are the size they are as a result of polygenic inheritance. Simply put, retics get the size they get because of multiple genes.
One theory iv come up with, is retic pattern, genetically speaking isn't necessarily back pattern an side pattern.
But its actually right and left hemisphere. When it comes to structure. The right and left sides seem to be much more consistent with their colors than pattern structure.
Ive only seen two retics that had noticeably different colors on the right and left sides. One was a wc halmahera and the other was a f1 ternate.
I make this claim because of the consistency of rosette placement. Rosettes are always located at the point where the back diamond is the lowest point on the side.
Its rare you see rosettes offset. Its much more common to see a misalignment of the right and left sides of back diamonds.
In fact you rarely see a back pattern with consistently lined up back diamonds.
This leads me to believe that the right side of the back diamond and the rosette directly underneath it are genetically more connected in their formation than the left side of the same back diamond.
Ill get into the importance of that for creating aberrant back patterns later.
There's some different types of selective breeding.
There's the bullshit type. Where you get two retics and breed them together. Pick out the nicest pair and pretend like you were intentionally trying to make. You continue to do that for years until your genetic tree looks like a stump.
As epic as the results may be sometimes. It has its drawbacks. Without first isolating specific traits you want to work with you have to rely of those traits being somewhere in the genetics of the snakes you're breeding.
Then you need them to line up and alter the phenotype expression.
This method of selective breeding is called the pissing in the wind approach.
Its a safe bet if you don't know anything about selective breeding if you're doing this. There's always some retics in a clutch that look better than the rest.
All you have to do is pretend like you were trying to make them intentionally.
Then there's real selective breeding. This requires you first find retics that have specific traits you're looking for and want to reproduce.
This take some thinking and real effort to find the right animals. You don't want to make worse looking retics then the retics you started with. You have to be careful that you don't pair the wrong ones.
Its pretty straightforward. Super dwarfs a perfect example.
You want to make small ocelots. Naturally you get an ocelot and breed it to a super dwarf.
You probably want to go with a pure tk line kalaotoa from ROR because, somehow in less then 10 years garratte managed to magically make super dwarfs smaller. While simultaneously turning tk sds into pure kalaotoas.
That was sarcasm.
But you get the point. If you're going to do any actual selective breeding with an ocelot you're going to breed it to a super dwarf.
The market wants smaller retics and ocelot, so naturally you want to put those two together.
Lets face it. Youre not going to do something like breed an ocelot to one of the last remaining sulawesi females that actually wants to breed.
There's some more obvious options for selective breeding like using bali/yellow head for more color.
Saputrai for more red.
Those are all traits that you can easily incorporate into any breeding and get the results you want.
And they are all examples of polygenic selective breeding.
The difference between this kind of selective breeding and the pissing in the wind selective breeding is the following. 1. Its intentional 2. Its naturally creating genetic diversity into your projects.
Genetic diversity is important in selective breeding because a lot of the time line breeding is required to lock in traits.
The best case scenario is you can get a group of wc animals that have similar looks that you want to reproduce. That allows you to start with multiple unrelated bloodlines and doesnt require inbreeding right away.
Most of the selective breeding you see in retics besides downsizing with super dwarf and dwarf blood, is for color enhancement.
Color manipulation is probably the easiest next to downsizing, because it doesn't seem to need to come from both side. Back pattern manipulation does.
Bali, selayar, and some others will easily add color first breeding.
Most of this kind of selective breeding is done for morph enhancement, with platty, and sunfire. Bacan will be the next morph you see localities being used to enhance colors.
Not too many people are trying to use color to enhance simple recessive morphs.
Im using yellow head gene in indo caramel. Sunfire mixed with bali and mindanao to make indo have more contrast. Im doing the same with ternate, sunfire and indo for more contrast.
I have a mindanao anthrax project to add color into anthrax with the mindanao color spectrum.
Also mindanao and ternate color spectrum for adding color to ocelot.
Theres not a lot of breeders using locality colors for simple recessive genes but there are some doing it.
A lot of the locality selective breeding for colors is to offset the color lost in morphs that have already been bred into super dwarfs.
Thats what make selective breeding for color so easy. All you have to do is pick a locality with the colors you want and breed it into your sd projects
You don't get as bright of colors as the pure locality, but your get a lot brighter colors then when just using super dwarf.
The super dwarf morph crosses still have color potential from the mainland blood already in them. Adding the right locality allows those mainland colors and locality colors to work together.
The result is a better looking retic. You have to give up a little bit of the super dwarf downsizing to get it. So its a trade off.
This is all polygenic selective breeding as i side before.
Its Pretty basic stuff.
Advanced selective breeding.
This is where you go from simple breedings for some extra color or some downsizing into changing the phenotype look in a drastic way.
Selective breeding with morphs is complete different than selective breeding with wild types.
When you're selective breeding with morphs, you're using a normal to make a morph look better.
When you're selective breeding with traits you're using polygenic inheritance to make better looking wild types.
The most important thing to understand about polygenic selective breeding vs morph breeding, and if you can understand this it will allow to 10x the aesthetic value of your retics.
When using morphs you are working with net loss. When using polygenic traits you are working with a net gain.
What i mean by that is, when using morphs to make better looking retics you are taking away a part of color or pattern. Thats what morphs do. The remove aspects of the normal wild type look.
When selectively breeding for polygenic traits you are adding traits to the normal wild type look. Thicker black, more color, more back diamonds.
Only in specific cases are you using traits to remove parts of the pattern or color. An example of that would be if i wanted to have thinner black i could use a kayuadi. If i wanted to limit some of the darker colors to more the greens and yellows i could use a mindanao.
But for the most part polygenic selective breeding is adding something not taking it away like morphs.
Morph enhancement with localities is made possible by the localities ability add some part of pattern or color spectrum that the morph isn't able to take away.
Albinos don't make retics brighter. They take away dark pigment. Albinism doesn't add massive amounts of white, yellows, oranges.
Thats just what it leaves
Anthrax destroys back diamonds.
Platty only leaves greens and yellows and thins out the black.
The Goal of polygenic breeding is to offset those loses as much as possible to create contrast. Its contrast that gives retics their looks.
Its morphs that remove contrast.
Thats why morph combos all start to look the same once you stack too many.
Theres so much color and pattern removed you are left with a retic that has no contrast.
These are the aspects of wild type look i take into consideration when breeding for polygenic traits. 1 back pattern. This is the most important. It sets the look of the retic and determines the pattern structure.
2 side pattern structure. This is the rosettes, their placement, and their number. They are tied in heavily with the back pattern. There shape and size is very closely related to the shape of the back diamonds. The space between the two at the back diamonds lowest point. The rosette size on the side and the closest point between them. These are the things to look at.
This will determine things like whether you get a classic tiger or a striped tiger. Or a marble with a white strip down the side or small little rosettes spaced out.
3 Pattern outlining. This is the area of color that ranges from dark brown to yellow that surrounds the outside of the back pattern and rosettes.
This area is where the color lives on a retic and its this area that will determine what kind of contrast the retic has. If its more of a brown next to black or more of a yellow next to black.
The pop factor of the retic is connected to this area of pattern.
4 Color spectrum. This is the total range of color on the retic. Some localities like super dwarfs have very limited color spectrum. White, brown, green, black.
Some localities have very wide range of colors. Luzon in the Philippines probably have the widest range of colors i can think of.
Im working to expand color spectrum by combining ternate and philippine color spectrums.
5 Side banding. Side banding is when you have usually elongated rosettes and the pattern outlining gos past the rosettes to the belly.
These are the 5 traits of polygenic selective breeding.
Theres some others like eye color, belly scales, black ticking. But youre not going to selectively breed for any of those at the sacrifice of the other 5.
Back pattern explained
Back pattern is really easy to make worse and really hard to make better. Well not really hard. It depends on what youre trying to do.
Back pattern has the following characteristic that are subject to change depending on the polygenic trait. 1 thickness of black 2 diamond shape 3diamond count 4 Proximity of diamonds to each other 5 Proximity of diamonds to rosettes 6 Width of diamonds 7 Length of diamonds
The back pattern is the part that really decides how the retic is going to look.
Its really important when youre trying to understand how back pattern will affect the phenotype look of a of a wild type or a morph.
One of the best examples of this is a super dwarf tiger. Most super dwarf tigers are classic tiger. I would argue that Super dwarf tiger look better than most of locality tiger crosses.
Heres why super dwarfs make classic pattern tigers. 1 There black is thinner 2 There diamond shape is typically straight lines to a sharp point. 3 Not a super high diamond count 4 A lot of the back diamonds arent touching or are barely touching 5 Most of the diamonds arent touching the rosette or are barely touch and the black is still thin where they do touch. 6 The width of the diamonds isnt real wide. They dont typically go too far down on the side of the retic. 7 the length of the diamonds are decently long and they usually dont bleed into each other too much. With the sharp straight lines of the back diamonds going moving away from each other at a wide angle, the space between them gets bigger and bigger.
Of the 7 aspects of back pattern i have explained all of them as they typically express in super dwarfs. Once you understand them and how they express in super dwarf you should understand why super dwarfs have a tendency to make classic pattern tigers.
If the super dwarf back diamonds were thick black, rounded, interconnected, went further down into the rosette and didnt come to a point at the rosette, super dwarf tigers would be striped.
Since rosettes seem to follow suit and has similar traits as the back diamonds, they act very similar with the with the tiger pattern on the side as the back pattern does on the back.
Another good example of this is an sd marble and a ternate marble. Both can be used to make marbles with a lot of marbling.
The difference is a lot of super dwarf marbles will have small rosettes on the side. Most ternate marbles while having a crazier back pattern. A lot of the time will have a white stripe on the side where the rosettes are connected by the function of the marble gene.
This is more connected to the back pattern then people realize. Ternate back patterns unlike sds, tend to have a very high diamond count. Much thicker black. A lot more black connecting to the back diamond to the rosette. That all leads to a higher rosette count and each rosette has more white, more black.
The marble gene exaggerates everything while tending to push the back diamond and rosette away from each other.
This downward push seems to spread out the rosette horizontally. Causing a stripe.
Thinner back pattern can cause a lot of different things. Typically its results in less contrast for morphs, do to the fact a lot of morphs reduce and remove black.
If you goal is thin black back pattern, its pretty easy to accomplish. All you have to do is use any sd, jamp, or kayuadi. Kayuadi naturally has some of the thinnest black of any locality we have in the US.
Kayuadi tends to have a good amount of side pattern outlining and side banding so there is the trade off when using kayuadi.
But lets get away from examples and focus more on some general information regarding.
1 thickness of black 2 diamond shape 3diamond count 4 Proximity of diamonds to each other 5 Proximity of diamonds to rosettes 6 Width of diamonds 7 Length of diamonds
Lets break these down a little more.
1 Thickness of black. This is going to be a big determining factor in over all contrast of wild type and morphs, as i mentioned above.
If the back pattern is thin black typically the rest of the black on the snake is thin. Your not going to see a lot of connecting black from the back diamond to the rosette, down to the belly. This is much more likely to happen with thicker black patterns.
Thin black back pattern = less contrast Thicker black back pattern = more contrast
2 Back diamond shape. To me a sharp back diamond is the best looking shape for a back diamond. Thats more then just my subjective opinion.
In terms of functionality for morph manipulation, it gives you the ability to add a sharp edge and more straight lines.
This give the look of the retic leading lines that draw your attention to the pattern structure. Its more like they have start and stop points in the pattern.
Where a rounded back pattern has much more of a flow to it. When the pattern has a natural flow to it, it causes you to observe the retic as a whole more.
The sharp back pattern cause you to look at the retic like it has different parts and points of reference.
Theres a third type of back diamond that's kind of in between sharp and straight.
Its got more of hexagonal shape. Its got a roundish shape but some edges to it.
A lot of times these back diamonds sit higher on the back and dont touch the rosettes.
The last type of back diamond is the aberrant back diamond that. These are an offset of the right and left side of the back diamonds and bleed into each other.
These are by far the most useful back diamonds for creating different looks in morphs. Because of the misalignment its creates a natural chaos that allows you easily change back pattern structure.
Its outcomes are more unpredictable because its a lack of coherent structure. The right side of the diamond is a different shape and in a different place then the left side of the diamond. When you are looking at the horizontal and vertical middle plane.
This makes in almost impossible to know the outcome beyond knowing the right and left sides will be off center. Which creates the aberrant pattern.
This is a very useful polygenic trait. You really need it coming from both male and female to ensure you will get some aberrant back patterns.
There's still the possibility that the diamonds will have some kind of shape to them
I believe that the genes that cause aberrant back pattern is a separate set of genes that create the offsetting of the the back diamonds.
A aberrant back pattern can have sharp, rounded, or hexagonal shapes, while still being completely aberrant.
Its an issue of misalignment.
You can see where the back pattern tried to have some kind of shape, and the misalignment created an aberrant pattern.
3 Back diamond count. Back diamond count is very closely related to rosette count. Its typically a one to one ratio.
I always try for a high back diamond count because it give me more opportunities.
The main opportunity it gives you is more contrast. More back diamonds means more black. High back diamond count is almost always a good thing. With exceptions like trying to make classic pattern tigers with a retic with thicker black and rounded diamonds.
That will cause striping.
Low back diamond count usually means fewer and longer rosettes. Which also means a greater chance of wider pattern outlining and side banding.
High diamond count with sharp edges creates something like the fractalus line ternates.
While high diamond count with rounded back pattern tends to make a stripe.
4 Back diamond proximity to each other.
I doubt too many people think about this, but its an extremely important aspect of back pattern structure. Especially with the phenotype expression of morphs.
This and back pattern shape is the biggest determining factor on getting a striped out pattern or a broken up pattern.
Tiger, marble, motley, tribal, phantom, all albinos, are easily striped out by rounded back pattern and back diamonds that are touching each out.
I specifically held back an f1 ternate because of the distance between the back diamonds. With ternates in general having thicker black, and higher back diamond count, its hard to offset the results of striping. Shape is what makes it possible.
The best way to avoid it is with distance between the back diamonds.
This doesn't give them a chance to connect with each other.
The distance is related to the shape, because the further you go out from the center of the back, where the diamonds touch or are closest, that distance either get quite big or its very small.
If its sharp back diamonds with straight lines moving away from each out at two 45 degree angles, the distance is much greater between those two straight lines.
Compared to rounded back diamonds that are moving way from each other on a curve.
The distance between back diamonds at their closest points on the back is a separate trait from the distance, thats determined by the shape. It is the shape that determined the distances between the adjacent sides of each back diamonds.
5 Proximity of back diamonds to rosettes.
This is another aspect of back pattern people don't think about and how it affects the over all look of the retic.
Back diamonds in relation to rosettes have only two possibilities.
Touching or not touching.
This is determined by other aspects of the back pattern more than anything.
Rosettes pretty much are where they are on wild types and you don't see much variation of vertical placement, outside of a morph influence.
This means this aspect of pattern is the cause of other aspects and most likely not a polygenic trait in an of itself.
1 Black thickness, 2, shape, and 6, back diamond width are the 3 aspects of back pattern polygenic traits that is determining back diamond proximity to rosettes. Meaning if back diamonds and rosettes are touching its because of thickness of black, diamond width, and the shape of the rosette.
If the black is thin. The pattern is round. The width across is short. The lowest point of the back diamond and the highest point of rosette will be further apart.
If the black is thick. The pattern is sharp. The width across is wide. The lowest point of the back diamond and the highest point of the rosette will be close or touching.
This is why thick black is important.
The best chance to get black that connects from the back diamond to the rosette and down to the belly is with thick black. Thick black helps to close the gaps in those areas that aren't connected in most phenotype expression of the wild type pattern structure.
6 Diamond width. This is important as i mentioned above for closing the gap between back diamonds and rosettes.
Its also an aspect of back pattern we see commonly changed by morphs. Since a lot of morphs change the structure of the back diamond or remove its, it cause the distance in between the top of the rosette and the bottom of back diamond to change.
In the case of tiger it changes the back diamond in a why that elongates it and makes the area usually closer, and a larger part of the back diamond touching the rosette.
Since the tiger gene is elongating both the back diamond and the rosette, you're getting a larger area of connection.
In most cases. Sds and some other localities that have unique back pattern structures cant really close the gap and in some cases make it wider.
This is why the of the 7 aspects of back pattern needs to be learned.
So you can understand what combination of polygenic back pattern traits youre working with in a particular retic.
Variation of results is determined by the combination of the different back pattern traits.
If you want to control the results you have to first analyze the back pattern to understand the combinations youre working with.
If you dont know what the polygenic traits are youre working with you can control them.
7.Back diamond length.
This is a very important aspect of back pattern for retics. This will determine a lot of thing. Namely the number of back diamonds. The longer the back diamond the less of them there are. You cant have a high back diamond count and have long back diamonds.
With the rosette being connected to the back diamonds in number a longer back diamond usually leads to a longer rosette. This is important because this will a contributing factor to other aspects of retic look.
Pattern outling and side banding. The longer the rosette the more surface area around it that is occupied by pattern outlining. The wider the rosette the more area underneath it that can all more color and cause side banding.
This all leads to higher contrast by having more area on a retic with the colors to be expressed.
The wider the color spectrum the more colors and the larger the area for those colors to express the higher the contrast.
Long back diamonds means less of them and less rosettes. shorter back diamonds means more of the and more rosettes.
Shorter back diamonds do seem to limit the pattern outlining by the back diamonds, rosettes, the back that surrounds them taking up more real estate of the retics available area for pattern to be expressed.
This is why you see shorter back diamonds and rosettes resulting in thinner pattern outlining and less side banding.
There just isnt enough room left.
Im working on trying to create a balance with higher diamond count while getting a good amount of pattern outlining and side banding.
This also has its compromises because the more pattern outlining and side banding the less silver in between the rosettes.
The contrast on retics is created by those three main things. 1.Black/white 2.colors in the pattern outlining and side banding 3.The silver between the rosettes.
Thats why retics have some great contrast Its white, then black, then bright colors, then lighter colors
black surrounding the a white rosette. Then gos into colors ranging from yellow to brown. Then silvers and lighter colors.
Back pattern really sets the structure for the rest of the retic, and back diamonds really platy a big part in how the rest of the aspects of wild type look will be distributed.
If you want to make a retic with a certain look you have to pick the back pattern traits that will influence the rest of the wild type look, in a way that will help you create the look youre going for.
A long back diamond will have a predictable effect when combined with morphs. Namely striping when the shape of the diamond is more rounded and doesnt come to a point.
If the back diamond width is short and the length is long plus rounded in shape, while touching or interconnected, it can only create striped out looks when combined with most morphs.
Tiger, marble, albino, anthrax, motley, tribal, aztec, ocelot, ect. They will all be a guaranteed stripe.
The only way they wont have striping is if there's enough unexpressed polygenic traits that line up to create a different back pattern. If there are it will only be on a handful of offspring that express it.
SIDE PATTERN STRUCTURE
Side pattern structure is the second aspect of the phenotype look of retics you need recognize before doing selective breeding.
The side pattern structure is really determined by the rosette, with is largely related to back diamond structure as i talked about earlier.
The length of the rosette, its shape, width, and the black surrounding it will really set the parameters for the rest of the side pattern in terms of area.
What areas are occupied by the rosettes is directly related to the rest of the amount of space the side pattern structure has to work with.
A wide rosette with thick black take up a lot more space then small round rosettes and with thin black.
That extra area has to be filled in with something. Pattern outlining and the silver in between is what compensates for that space.
Saputrai, ternates, halmaheras, siau, most of the philippines, all have limited silver on the sides compared to malaysians, sumatrans, and east javans.
A lot of balis have very large areas of silver as well.
We dont know how side pattern structure works in terms of polygenic traits.
Is there a set of traits that makes the area of silver larger in some localites and it causes the pattern outlining, rosettes to be smaller? We dont know.
Or is larger silver the result as a natural fill in when there is limited blakc, small rosettes, and thin pattern outlining?
In terms of cause and effect we dont know which is the cause and which is the effect.
What we do know is they are reproduceable traits that you can selectively breed for and thats all that matters.
Smaller rosettes and thin outlining is the real cause of the high white look everyone likes on ghost.
That look isnt a result of the ghost gene. Its the results of the pattern structure commonly found expressed in malaysian retics.
Thats why so many ghost morphs dont look as good as the ghost close to the original wc.
The traits that create the high white look people like are being bred out but adding morphs that shift the pattern around and limit the area silver and increase the are of pattern outlining.
Snows are another example that benefit from larger area of silver and reduced pattern outlining.
Thats were the rosette comes into place. If you have a wide rosette theres a better chance more pattern outlining and more color. This causes much less area for the silver.
The black surrounding the rosette play a big role in the look of the retic.
When it comes to really making some nice looking retics extra black around the rosettes is what you want.
If the traits line up for thick black around the rosettes and the back diamonds has thick black. Plus are wide enough to touch the black of the rosettes, now youre into connecting pattern structure.
Theres usually some black that runs where the side pattern runs into the belly scales.
When its thick enough there you can get the black connecting from the belly to the rosette.
Combined that with black connecting from the diamonds to the rosettes, now you have a completely connected pattern structure.
In most cases this is a goal you want to achieve.
Its rarely achievable though, because the amount of traits you need to line up.
1.Thick black around the back diamonds 2.Thick black around the rosettes 3.Thick black along the belly 4.Wide back diamonds that touch rosettes 5.Black that touches from the bottom of the rosette to the black at the belly.
It makes great looking normals and allows you to offset all black reducing morphs. Which is most of them.
The best way to offset the net loss from morphs is with a net gain from polygenic selective breeding.
Pattern outlining
Pattern outlining is the space between the black that surrounds the back diamond and the rosettes and the silver.
Its that area that give color offset for contrast from the black.
This area is almost a variable as back pattern. Some retics have very think pattern and some have so much that they have little silver in between.
The true mainlands, java, and into the lesser sundas, you will see limited pattern outlining. Not all retics from those areas are like that be a lot are.
Once you get into saputrai, the central and northern malukus, and banda arc retics, and go east and north, theres a lot more pattern outlining.
The main time you see more limited pattern outlining on those localities is when you see very thick black.
There does seem to be a trade off for space when its between thick black, pattern outlining, and the silver area.
If theres a lot of one theres less of the other two. If theres a lot of two the other one is barely there at all.
Utilizing outlining is probably the easiest selective breeding. It seems to only need to come from one side to get some measure of it in offspring.
It works great with gene like sunfire, and platty because those genes already seem to add more pattern outlining as a function.
Those genes have their limitations and can only do what they can do, but adding more area for them to express is the easiest way to make better examples of them.
We dont know if they actually add more pattern outlining or reduced the silver area. Either way thats the result, so simply adding more pattern outlining is the best way to give genes more space on the retic to express.
The area that pattern outlining takes up really determines the potential for contrast. If its wide the black will be surrounded by much more color, making it stand out more.
If the area that it takes up is small the contrast will be less and more dependent of the the silver creating the contrast.
Pattern outlining is probably the easiest to manipulate. It doesnt take much more then one round of selective breeding to increase it.
If you want a lot more of it now youre into multiple breedings.
Color Spectrum
The range of color is white to black.
Retic naturally have a lot of color, with the exception of some of the localities.
I good comparison of this is the anery video i did where i showed the difference of an sd and a ternate on a rec 709 color space in da vinci resolve.
That video clearly showed the amount of color the ternate had that the sd didnt. You can look at them and see it but it being on a graph and really showing just how much more space on the color spectrum is occupied from one locality to another is interesting.
This is also easy to manipulate with localities. The easiest way to look at it is with locality crosses. When you breed a super dwarf into whatever locality, you get better colors then a pure sd and worse colors then whatever locality was used.
You get an in between look that can have a very wide range of colors because you get some colors from each side that the other locality didnt have or has less of.
If youre going for more yellows in a locality with a decent amount of yellows already, sd isnt going to help with that.
If youre trying to add more yellows into your sd projects then clearly the way to go is the locality with more yellow.
Think of color spectrum like incomplete dominance. Red flower plus white flower equals pink flower.
Tambolangan plus sd equals less color than tambolangan but a lot more color than sd.
Being that sd locality crosses have more color than pure sd it means color spectrum in sd isnt controlled by a gene that shuts off color. Sds simply dont have the colors available. Thats why its so easy to add color into sd projects in a single breeding.
The best why create a wide color spectrum is by combining the different localities and getting a mix of the colors they naturally have.
This should not be done at the expense of pures. If you only have one pure female, make more pures.
A lot of old breeders didnt see the need for pure until we lost importation.
I recently did a breeding of a tribal ( 75% mindanao 25% bohol ) x f1 ternate with side banding and a lot of color.
There will be some trade offs of colors with that breeding. Namely that the phils color spectrum being more of the green color space, will work against some of the yellows and oranges of the ternate.
But it wont reduce all of it and it will add a very wide range of color.
While the over all lighter colors of the mindanao will shift everything.
The point of that breeding was to make ternate tribals but more importantly to make the philukus.
Ternate sd crosses have been made and mindanao sd crosses have been made.
A ternate philippine cross would be a very useful cross for sd projects.
The two localities with the most variation in the US are ternate and next is philippine.
Crossing these two together will give the widest possible range for color.
Both also have wider pattern outlining with a tendency for side banding.
This means more area for the widest color spectrum to express.
Color spectrum is a really easy part of the phenotype to change. Once you learn what localities have what colors you can start to mix and match to get the look you want for your normals and morphs.
Side Banding.
Side banding is part of the pattern outlining. It happens when theres genes that cause the pattern outlining to go belove the rosette and stay wider then usual. It causes a banded look with thin silver in between.
It give a very symmetrical look to the pattern. The color tends to get lighter as it gets closer to the belly so it creates a gradient from the belly to the top of the retic.
Side banding is great for morphs like platty, sunfire, motley, aztec, phantom, ogs, marble.
Hopefully side banding can be used to add color back to ocelot. We are currently working on that.
Ternates, halmaheras, mindanao, tibal phils, selayar, sula, kayuadi, all tend to have a lot of side banding.
Side banding usually is seen on retics that have longer rosettes but not always.
Its not been possible for me to make a retic with high diamond count with thick black, that touch the rosette and have black touching the belly, while having enough pattern outlining to create side banding.
Im not sure why but it does seem that there is a trade off between side banding and high diamond count with thicker black.
That covers selective breeding for color and pattern manipulation.
Variation in morphs is caused by the gene that control the 5 aspects of retic wild type look.
Thats why its important to understand you cant use a morph to make itself look better.
The morph can only be manipulated the five parts discussed. Im sure theres other but for morphs these are the only ones you need to worry about.
Analyzing morph function is the next part of selective breeding.
You can know everything above but if you dont understand what a morph actually does, you wont know how to make it look better.
When looking at a morph you have to compare it to a wild type. Whats the difference between morph and the wild type for back patter side pattern pattern outlining color spectrum side banding
Morphs change those in some why from the original look. Albino is an extreme example, and so is golden child.
One changes completely the color. The other changes completely the pattern, and color.
Lets look at indo caramel and what changes can be made to the 5 parts that we can manipulate with selective breeding.
Back pattern can be changed. Side pattern can be changed. Pattern outlining can be changed. Color spectrum be changed with any of the colors that the gene doesnt shut off. Side banding can be changed.
Almost everything about an in do caramel can be changed with polygenic traits.
With the exception of the colors the gene shuts off. This makes indo caramel a gene that you can make look anyway you want.
Golden child is a different story all together. It limits color spectrum, back pattern, and side pattern drastically.
All the changes that can be made with polygenics is so little that it wont have a noticeable impact on the look of golden child like it does indo caramel.
Its still worth adding more color, and pattern. Because you get half a clutch that isnt golden child in every golden child breeding.
Would you rather have great looking normals in a clutch of golden children or average looking normals.
Even if you cant alter the look of a morph to the point of adding aesthetic value with polygenic traits, its still worth adding the traits to add aesthetic value to the rest of the clutch.