# rainbow tiger beardie traits



## stoogie555 (Mar 4, 2011)

hi there, does anyone have an idea about if a rainbow tiger bearded dragon has the following traits* heterozygous or homozygous or is there not a trait.any help would be great.as i have one that was sold as a hypo rainbow tiger a while ago and another that i bought that just said rainbow tiger,and both are adults and look identical. how can you be sure it is a hypo.*


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## fantapants (Jan 4, 2008)

A hypo has clear nails? and the hypo trait is recessive so both parents need to carry the gene.


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## stoogie555 (Mar 4, 2011)

thanks but does the rainbow tiger carry *heterozygous or homozygous traits ie,1 gene or 2 genes or does it not have any?*


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## jarvis and charlie (Mar 27, 2009)

stoogie555 said:


> thanks but does the rainbow tiger carry *heterozygous or homozygous traits ie,1 gene or 2 genes or does it not have any?*


 rainbow tiger is just a name , only way to find out the history is from there breeder ,they know the parents and grandparents line


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## imginy (Jun 14, 2009)

stoogie555 said:


> thanks but does the rainbow tiger carry *heterozygous or homozygous traits ie,1 gene or 2 genes or does it not have any?*





jarvis and charlie said:


> rainbow tiger is just a name , only way to find out the history is from there breeder ,they know the parents and grandparents line


Tiger Morph http://www.pukkadragons.co.uk/info.htm: Tigers are Homozygous (dominant gene). One parent must be a Tiger morph in order to produce Tiger babies. Any bearded dragon clutch with blue side bars will be deemed a 'visual tiger', but will not reproduce the trait. As babies, Tigers are a dark, sooty, charcoal colour with black 'zebra-like' markings. They get lighter with every shed until they reproduce their parental morph colours with purple/blue side bars. Tiger's can be any colour morph, as long as one parent is a Tiger morph.


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## jarvis and charlie (Mar 27, 2009)

imginy said:


> Tiger Morph http://www.pukkadragons.co.uk/info.htm: Tigers are Homozygous (dominant gene). One parent must be a Tiger morph in order to produce Tiger babies. Any bearded dragon clutch with blue side bars will be deemed a 'visual tiger', but will not reproduce the trait. As babies, Tigers are a dark, sooty, charcoal colour with black 'zebra-like' markings. They get lighter with every shed until they reproduce their parental morph colours with purple/blue side bars. Tiger's can be any colour morph, as long as one parent is a Tiger morph.


cool i just thought it was a made up name cheers imginy:2thumb:


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

jarvis and charlie said:


> cool i just thought it was a made up name cheers imginy:2thumb:


I'm dubious... :lol2:



imginy said:


> Tiger Morph http://www.pukkadragons.co.uk/info.htm: Tigers are Homozygous (dominant gene). One parent must be a Tiger morph in order to produce Tiger babies. Any bearded dragon clutch with blue side bars will be deemed a 'visual tiger', but will not reproduce the trait. As babies, Tigers are a dark, sooty, charcoal colour with black 'zebra-like' markings. They get lighter with every shed until they reproduce their parental morph colours with purple/blue side bars. Tiger's can be any colour morph, as long as one parent is a Tiger morph.


TBH that doesn't make sense, along with a fair bit of the other genetics stuff on that link...

"Homozygous" = 2 copies of the same gene at a locus.

If the gene is dominant, then a Homozygous animal and a Heterozygous animal will both display the trait (that's what dominant means...)



The rest of it is dubious as well - there may be a Mendelian "tiger" gene (I've never seen one proven), but "tiger" can certainly be inherited in a polygenic way (ie you can selectively breed for "tiger" rather than an animal either being tiger or not). It can skip generations as well - two barely-striped parents can produce a baby with very defined tiger stripes. This is a sure sign that it's not limited to just a dominant gene...

That even contradicts itself - it says that one parent must be visual tiger to reproduce the trait (correct for a dominant trait), but then goes on to say that any bearded dragon clutch showing the trait will not reproduce the trait...?


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## imginy (Jun 14, 2009)

HadesDragons said:


> I'm dubious... :lol2:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I am definitely dubious as well thats why I copy and paste instead of wrote my own up lol



HadesDragons said:


> It can skip generations as well


My impression from speaking to people that breed the tigers and reading about them is that if the parents are not tigers then the baby wont be a real tiger, it may look like one but it wont have the dominant genes that are passed on to the next generation. With a true tiger if you breed it all the babies will be tigers where as if you have one that just looks like a tiger the babies wont all show these markings.

True Tiger morphs will carry this gene onto their offspring, as it is a “Co-dominate” gene.


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## imginy (Jun 14, 2009)

Have a read through this as it explains tiger morphs and they have proof of what tigers are and lots of pics. Bearded Dragon


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

imginy said:


> True Tiger morphs will carry this gene onto their offspring, as it is a “Co-dominate” gene.


"Co-Dominant" = het form different to the **** form which is different to the wild form. In beardies you'd be looking at the Silkback gene as an example of this:

Wild Type = normal scales
Heterozygous = 1 copy = leatherback
Homozygous = 2 copies = silkback

If "tiger" was the **** form of a co-dominant gene, breeding a tiger to a wild type would give you *zero* tigers - breeding a silkback to a wild type gives 100% leatherbacks. Zero silkbacks (and therefore zero tigers)

If "tiger" was the het form of a co-dominant gene, breeding a tiger to a wild type would give you *50% tiger offspring*. Breeding a tiger to a homozygous form would give you 50% tigers (equivalent of leatherbacks in our analogy) and 50% of the homozygous form (equivalent of silkbacks)

If "tiger" was a dominant gene, breeding a het tiger (single copy of a dominant gene = looks like a tiger) to a wild type would give you 50% tiger offspring. Breeding a **** tiger (two copies of the tiger gene = looks like a tiger, no different to the het tiger) to a wildtype would give you 100% tiger babies.

It's plausible that in this link that's what they're referring to (but read my last couple of paragraphs if nothing else!!) 



imginy said:


> Have a read through this as it explains tiger morphs and they have proof of what tigers are and lots of pics. Bearded Dragon


However...



imginy said:


> My impression from speaking to people that breed the tigers and reading about them is that if the parents are not tigers then the baby wont be a real tiger, it may look like one but it wont have the dominant genes that are passed on to the next generation. *With a true tiger if you breed it all the babies will be tigers where as if you have one that just looks like a tiger the babies wont all show these markings*


The only way the bold part could be possible if tiger were a simple gene is if you're breeding stock is 100% homozygous tigers, and tiger is dominant. In that case, the breeder would produce entire clutches of tiger babies, but they in turn would only produce half of clutches looking like tigers.

To be honest, that link is as confused as the other one - I suspect what they're trying to say is "our tigers will reliably produce tiger babies". This isn't the same as "tiger is a simple dominant Mendelian gene", and the terminology (mis)used in that link reinforces the point that they're meaning something different to what they're saying. To have a simple case of "het", "****" etc, the trait has to be caused by a *single* gene - as in Silkback, Albino, Hypo, Trans, Witblits. You can have an "easily inheritable" trait (ie one which is likely to pass onto the majority of babies in the next generation - something like "yellow" in beardies), but that doesn't make it "simple" or "homozygous" or anything like that.




To put some pictures to that and hopefully make it a bit clearer, take a look at this thread (I hope the breeder doesn't mind - free advertising and all that  ):

http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/foru.../687655-citrus-hypo-poss-het-translucent.html


Maggie and Erik were both produced by myself - I know their backgrounds in detail.

I'd describe Erik as a "tiger" - he has prominent, bold stripes, and produces "tiger" babies (see the ad above for photos):










Based on the babies he's producing with a non-stripey female in that thread, the trait seems to be passing on to a good proportion of babies, and it appears to be passed on by him, rather than by the mum.

This is Erik as a youngster as a comparison to what his babies look like now:











Now, according to the ideas posted so far, if "tiger" was simple (Mendelian) and dominant, it must have been passed through the generations to Erik. One of his parents *must* have been a tiger, and *must* passed it on to him, like he's passing it on to his babies. As all of the babies appear to show the striping, if it was a simple, dominant gene, one would assume that Erik must be a homozygous tiger (see above for the explanation - this is the only way to produce 100% visual babies from a single visual parent with a dominant gene). For Erik to be a homozygous tiger, both of his parents would have to be tigers as well (if tiger were a simple, dominant gene)

But they weren't.

This is Erik's mum:









I don't have a photo to hand of his dad, but in terms of colour and pattern, he was similar to this one (incidentally, this one *is* Maggie's dad). He's the most patterned, but - in my opinion - nowhere near patterned enough to be a "tiger":









And just for completeness, this is Maggie's mum:









All have a mild amount of patterning, but nothing like the pattern that a "tiger" would be expected to have - I wouldn't call any of them "tiger" beardies. Erik was one of a handful of babies which showed the "extreme" tiger-like patterning, so the trait certainly didn't appear in a lot of his siblings. It's highly unlikely that it's a novel mutation which appeared in him either, given that a small number of his clutch showed the trait - the odds of the same mutation occurring in several babies at once are astronomical. 

This is crucial, as it shows that:
1. Erik is not a new "tiger" mutation (because other babies showed the trait too - you'd be talking literally millions if not billions or trillions to one for that to happen)
2. Erik's parents are not tigers (because so few of their babies show the trait) - if they were and tiger were simple and dominant (or co-dominant), you'd be expecting around 50% tigers on average.


However, it appears to have passed on to just about all of his babies - the trait behaves exactly as the "tiger" trait described in that link is said to (ie: the beardie looks like a tiger, the beardie produces all tiger babies, only one parent need be tiger etc etc), and yet I've shown above that it's *not* a simple, dominant trait, as it *wasn't* passed down from any of Erik or Maggie's parents.

It possible that the stuff in that link is true - without trial breeding their stock, there's no way to tell (although I'm dubious due to some of the (mis)use of genetics terminology). However, it's perfectly possible to get a beardie trait which behaves exactly as they've described, without the trait itself necessarily being "simple" or "dominant" or "homozygous". My experience of "tiger" is that it's polygenic (like colour), and that it passes on "easily" to offspring (like the colour yellow in beardies). This makes it far more complex than simply "het", "****" etc... : victory:


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