photo courtesy of The Urban Reptile

One of the support tickets we recently received alerted us to an issue that some people have with the calculator and how trade names fit into it. We believe that understanding what trade names are and how to use them will go a long way in helping people enter the correct genetics for their animals.

A genetic trade name is a shorter name given to animals that have a certain set of traits. The name is usually considerably shorter than listing all of the genes that are contained in that particular morph and make it much easier to talk and write about them. For the novice breeder it can, at times, make it more confusing to know exactly what genetics are in the animals they buy.

Lets take RAPTOR as an example trade name in Leopard Geckos. A RAPTOR is a combination of Tremper Albino and the Eclipse gene. RAPTOR is one of the easier ones since it is an acronym. It stands for Red-eye Albino Patternless Tremper ORange. The patternless portion, in this case, is a polygenetic trait and not related to Murphy Patternless. In addition, many breeders will also call any animal, regardless of pattern, a RAPTOR as long as it contains Tremper Albino and Eclipse. If we add Mack Snow and Enigma to a RAPTOR now we have a Dreamsickle, which is a name that doesn't tell you anything at all about the gecko's genetics.

Listing animals as heterozygous for trade names makes things even more confusing for some. I've seen tons of listings where a gecko was Tremper Albino het for RAPTOR. To a novice this looks like RAPTOR is the gene that gecko is het for when in fact that animal is het Eclipse. Also, if the gecko was labelled Eclipse het for RAPTOR, it simply means het Tremper Albino.  Sometimes breeders will label their animal’s het for RAPTOR when it’s neither visually an Eclipse nor a Tremper Albino, this means that the animal is a double het, both het for Eclipse and het for Tremper Albino.

This brings me to the calculator. In our "Select Morph" list you can find RAPTOR. So even if you didn't know what genetics a RAPTOR is comprised of you could simply select that and have the correct genetics. In the het situation we used above we can't just select from the morph list. The selectors available beneath the morph list allow us to have more specific control over the genes. For this example we could select Tremper Albino and then select het Eclipse.

Another option would be to select RAPTOR. The selectors would all be chosen for the applicable genes and you can then just change the ones that are hets. Either one would get you what you need. Also, if you don't know what genetics make up a particular trade name you can hit the information button in our morph list and you will see which combination of genes are in it. You can then know which gene selectors to use.

Trade names exists not only in Leopard Geckos but  in all reptile genetics. Here are some examples.

Cornsnakes:

• Opal  (Lavender and Amelanistic)
• Butter (Caramel and Amelanistic)
• Plasma (Diffused and Lavender)

Western Hognose:

• Smolder (Albino and Smoke Hypo)
• Snow (Albino and Anerythristic)

I hope this post was helpful. As always if you have any questions about how to use the calculator you can reach us at our Facebook page and support@reptilecalculator.com.