The Anthrax mutation is the closest thing we have seen to a Striped or Motley Axanthic. The name "Anthrax" is meaningless as far as description but this is what we called our original male, he is a wild collected animal with a bit of a nervous disposition. Since then we have made heterozygous "Granite Backs" which are visually different and carry the Anthrax "motley" and "hypermel" genes.
We bred our visual back to one of his daughters and produced a clutch that confused us. The babies within varied from striped Anthrax, yellow striped, Granite Backs, some weird anaconda-looking ones and normal pattern "axanthic/hypermel" looking neonates. The unfortunate part of the story is that most of the babies went full term in the egg and died! Occasionally, we have clutches of retics that prove problematic with high mortality and some even killing themselves within the egg by tying their umbilicus into a knot. As of now, I have no clear idea why this happens. I most likely made and error in incubation temperatures and did not appreciate the increased temperatures of the clutch as they neared hatching. As a rule large clutches of eggs create their own added heat as they approach hatching; if the incubator probe is not sampling the clutch with the added heat, the result can be DEVASTATING!
Updated: We have been producing some real nice Anthrax retics and have some listed in our available section.
At present, the visual Anthrax is the combination of two recessive genes, the Motleyish Striped gene and the "hypermelanistic" gene. There appears to be a bit of genetic bleed through when bred to a normal wild-type retic, the resulting offspring can appear as Granite Backs. As babies they are not black and grey but develop this classic color as they age.
|
|||||||
