Splatter

Splatter is an inc-dominant mutation.

"A number of years ago I was lucky enough to buy an adult “normal” female that I thought looked a little Phantom like. This was back when Ralph Davis was the only person doing anything with the Phantom gene, so I thought it would be worth breeding her to see what came of it. When the breeding season started I paired to a Spider male, but sadly she only produced 2 viable eggs. Out of those two eggs I got 1.1 offspring that looked identical to the adult female, but sadly the female died shortly after hatching. I grew on the male and when he was old enough I paired him with his mother, and out of the resulting clutch hatched what I have termed Yellow Splatters. These appear to be similar to the Splatters, but lighter and brighter, with an obvious joining of the pattern along the sides of the neck. The clear belly also exhibits a parallel set of dark coloured dots that run the length of the belly, with some examples showing up more than others. I have since hatched more Yellow Splatters in subsequent seasons.

After growing up the female Yellow Splatter I decided to pair her to the first Splatter male that we produced, and in 2012 produced what I have termed the Super type Splatter. I originally thought that I had hit the Super Splatter, and that the Splatter gene was Co Dominant, but the following year in 2013 my good friends Tony & Becky Wilson (Tony & Becky Reptiles) produced 2 female Super type Splatters by pairing their Yellow Splatter male with an apparently unrelated and normal Pastel female. The clutch also produced a Splatter, a Yellow Splatter, a Splatter Pastel, and 2 female Yellow Splatter Pastels. They repeated the pairing the following year but sadly the female slugged out. This season they have paired their Yellow Splatter male to a selection of females, including the original Pastel female, so will hopefully have a few more Splatter combos to help us try and figure out what is going on gene wise." - Chris Jones

Update 2016 From Tony Wilson & Chris Jones

"After quite a few seasons of breeding we think that we are slowly getting to work out the puzzle that is the Splatter project. Last season we managed to answer a lot of the questions regarding the genetics of Splatters, and the current theory, which is work in progress, is that there are 2 different genes at play in the project; a CoDom Splatter gene and a recessive second gene that was hidden within some of the Splatter animals. We have produced 2 distinct grades of Super Type Splatters, which we now believe to be Splatter plus the visual recessive gene, and Super Splatter plus the visual recessive gene. The awesome male in the photo to the left we believe to be an example of the Super Splatter + visual recessive combo.

The photo below is the Pastel Super type Splatter female that we hatched in 2015. She was produced by pairing our Yellow Splatter male to a Pastel female. We think that the breeder male Yellow Splatter is a Super Splatter het recessive gene, and this particular Pastel female is a Pastel het recessive gene. That means that the Pastel Super type Splatter female we hatched is actually a combo of Pastel Splatter + the visual recessive gene.

Visually it is very similar to both the Cryptic gene and the Puzzle gene, so could be in the same complex of either one, or is unrelated genetically and just visually similar.

This is easily my most exciting project, and hopefully has real longevity. It is still in its infancy, but is showing real potential, especially now that we seem to have cracked how it is working. 2017 will see a lot of our large number of hold backs reach maturity and hopefully start breeding, and I can’t wait to see some of the combos that we could produce between us.

We have named the recessive gene MIGRAINE due to all the headaches its caused us trying to figure out what was going on.

We have not produced a straight Migraine as of yet but we have produced Super Splatter Migraines and Splatter Migraines plus an assortment of Super Splatter & Splatter hets and poss hets.

The marker for the het Migraine is the long neck pattern" ^[1]