Yellow Hypo Harlequin Partial Pin Crested Gecko by Reptilectrix Exotics

Hypo

Type: Dominant

First Produced By: Geckological

Aliases: Genotype H

First Produced In: Unknown

Availability: Average

Last Updated: 2023-04-23

Pattern Color

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History

The hypo trait has been around since we began working with the species. It remained undescribed as hypo by both breeders and hobbyists alike, with a few exceptions. With some evidence starting to emerge during the early 2000s, when we started using cream-on-cream to describe a particular morph that displayed the early signs of reduced melanin and that didn’t solely involve the yellow base. Cream, was described by Allen Repashy in a Reptiles USA 2002 article. In the article, Allen stated the possibility of a unicolored cream animal within the next few years could be attainable through selective breeding. In 2004 AC Reptiles shared some examples of cream-on-cream animals and later coined the “C2” term when establishing his project. For clarity C2 means “Cream squared”. Unfortunately, lots of confusion has been caused by breeders who misinterpreted C2 and thought it stood for Citrus. In 2006, during a Rhacodactylus Symposium, Allen went on to present several examples of developed morphs that can be seen as hypo variants of its particular phenotype. However, hypo wasn’t adopted as a term yet to describe the variations we were seeing, even though there was clear evidence of inheritance being presented in 2006.

Around 2015 Tom Favazza began to describe hypo’s characteristic inheritance and thus started using the hypo term. The article can be found here . Hypo may not always be apparent to everyone. Hypo is dominant but doesn’t fully express all of the time. The forms of hypo act inc-dom.^[1]

Appearance

Body

Hypo on a black base produces lavender. The color can range from a pale grey to purple-colored lavender, to the rarest which is a sky blue hue, and found in few collections. The range of color here has mostly to do with how refined the hypo is, and how many other traits the animal has that contribute to the overall phenotype. Epistasis may well be the greatest factor affecting the color tones of the different types of hypo . ^[2]

Hypo on a phenotype that naturally reduces melanin produces an animal with little to no dark coloration. You may notice areas that normally keep dark pigment such as under the tail base, and kneecaps, have significantly reduced coloration. These animals can be a pale yellow to a unicolor white cream color (which is yellow with reduced yellow pigment) which can be classified as a C2. Phantom variants produce silver and peach-colored tones as phantom suppresses coloration and produces more melanin. ^[3]

When normal dark or dirty reds get hypo added we will see a reduction of brown and/or black melanin. Hypo on red base produces neon reds to pink colored animals. These animals also fire down differently, tails are more uniform in color and lack dark pigment that is normally seen in reds without hypo . Hypo reds are also usually accompanied by WP instead of OP . The reduction of melanin, as the hypo trait becomes more dominant, lends itself to more consistent and clean-looking base tones. ^[4]