# Dragon morphing



## bexxxhill (Aug 11, 2009)

Right, I have looked in the sticky's to see if this has been asked before, and couldn't see any (apologies if it has)

I would like to know if there is a way of "predicting" what any given pairing of dragons may produce? Would a citrus with a rainbow tiger produce 50% citrus and 50% rainbow tigers, or would they produce a different morph altogether. Would a citrus with a citrus only produce citrus or do you have to just look at what appears and decide what it looks like? If so, is there a definitive list/pictorial guide to the possible naming of the morphs?

I have seen and read the articles on the punnet square to work out the recessive genetics etc, but is there such a method to work out likely morphs?

I hope that made sense???

Thank you in advance, Nick


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

bexxxhill said:


> Right, I have looked in the sticky's to see if this has been asked before, and couldn't see any (apologies if it has)
> 
> I would like to know if there is a way of "predicting" what any given pairing of dragons may produce? Would a citrus with a rainbow tiger produce 50% citrus and 50% rainbow tigers, or would they produce a different morph altogether. Would a citrus with a citrus only produce citrus or do you have to just look at what appears and decide what it looks like? If so, is there a definitive list/pictorial guide to the possible naming of the morphs?
> 
> ...


Basically, bearded dragon morphs can be broken down into two broad types - "simple" and "selective bred".

"Simple" morphs are Hypo, Translucent, Silkback (including Italian Leatherback/US Smoothie), recessive Leatherback and Albino; only the former three are found in the UK at this time, although recessive Leatherbacks are likely to be available in the near future. There's also the "Witblits" morph which has only recently appeared, although I don't know if the genetics have been 100% proved out on this.

"Simple" morphs do what it says on the tin - they are predictable and easy to work out using a punnett square, which you probably already know about.


The problematic ones are the selectively bred morphs; unlike the simple morphs where a single gene has a large effect on the phenotype of the animal, many genes contribute to the phenotype of a selectively bred morph - e.g. whilst a "Hypo" (simple) has only a single pair of "Hypo" genes, a high-end Blood Red may have 20+ pairs of "Red" genes. If a beardie has a few, it's a bit red. If it has a lot, it's quite red. If it has loads, it's bright red.

This makes predicting the outcomes a lot harder, as it's hard to know which copies the parents have, which makes it harder to predict how well the genes will pair up in the babies.

To answer your question about Citrus x Citrus, in general breeding two similar animals will result in babies similar to the parents. This isn't always the case, and there will always be a range of colours in the babies (some will inherit more "Yellow" genes than others).

Crossing different colours will usually yield a range of babies. Most will show characteristics of both parents, but usually to a lesser extent - "Bright Red" x "Bright Yellow" (regardless of morph) will usually give a majority of babies that are a mix of the two colours, but not as bright as either parent - this could be in the form of orange babies, yellow babies with red markings, red babies with yellow markings etc. Some babies will show more paternal traits (e.g. mostly red with a bit of yellow), and others will show more maternal traits (e.g. mostly yellow with a bit of red).

Rainbow Tiger x Citrus should produce babies that are like yellow versions of the Rainbow Tiger. Seeing as both morphs contain yellow, the yellow genes are likely to match up quite well, so the babies will probably show a lot of yellow. The stripes from the Tiger may be inherited in some babies, but probably to a lesser extent. Some orange may be passed on (especially if the citrus is more of an orangey colour), so as a rough guess you'd expect the babies to have yellow as a base colour, probably with some orange tones on a majority, with a fair bit of orange on a few. Some of the babies are likely to show more defined striping. If the citrus is a "Hypo Citrus" (Hypo being "simple") then all offspring would be 100% het Hypo, but unless the Rainbow Tiger is het Hypo you wouldn't get any visual Hypo babies.


Naming morphs is up to you really - I personally tend to name babies either based on what the parents were, or on what they look like; yours could be something like "Rainbow Tiger x Citrus babies", or maybe "Orange/Citrus" babies. One of the reasons why morph naming is such a mess at the moment is that there's no definitive guide.

Hope that makes sense!

Andy


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## bexxxhill (Aug 11, 2009)

Andy, now that is exactly the answer I was looking for!!! And I actually understood it too. Thank you for your advice :2thumb: :2thumb: :2thumb:


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