NDBE

No single gene pictures yet. Above are Combos.

It all started in 2013 when I was frantically looking for a nice tangerine male to improve my tangerine line. Despite knowing a lot of world renowned breeders I hadn’t found what I was looking for and my dearest friend and partner Lydie Verger –Didiegecko Aft, kindly offered me one of her hatchlings, a really nice looking Mandarin Tangerine male named Noir Désir (“Black Desire” in French). This male hatched out of a superb looking Mandarin Tangerine pairing with practically full Carrot Tails. It was very obvious that this male, Noir Désir, had the same qualities as its parents but a different, much darker overall look.

The most intriguing for sure were his eyes. They were totally black and the eye expression seemed different than usual.

As the gecko hadn’t been expressing any characteristic phenotype of Eclipse genetics other than the black eyes, I spoke to Didie and told her that we might have something new on our hands. We decided to test breed it with a RAPTOR female to make sure, first of all, that it was not Eclipse, and second, that it was het free of Tremper Albino. A year later the test with the RAPTOR female proved negative: all the offspring produced were Normal –Tangerines, neither showing visible signs of Eclipse nor Tremper traits. It all suggested that the Noir Désir eye trait should be a simple recessive gene but we had to wait yet one more year to see what would result from pairing the Noir Désir male with F1 generation offspring. At the time it came to my attention that the eyes of the male had changed and the black had diffused so they were no longer all black.

This kind of eye coloration in Leopard Geckos was somewhat similar to the Marble Eyes trait which raised some questions as to whether it could actually be the Marble Eyes. It seemed at that point that we needed to do one more test pairing (Noir Désir eyes x Marble Eyes) which we carried out later.

In 2015 we started hatching out the babies of the Mandarin Tangerine Noir Désir Black Eyes (in short MTNDBE) from different pairings: Mandarin Tangerine Noir Désir (father – P1) with Mandarin Tangerine or Mandarin Tangerine Cross (daughters – F1) which were not expressing black eyes but were obviously hets for NDBE. Such results have confirmed our belief that this new morph is a simple recessive trait. Our further observation of the babies showed that the majority of MTNDBE babies are hatching darker than their clutch mates or other hatchlings from the same pairings. ^[1]

GeckoBoa: Noir Desire Black Eye (NDBE) aka Noir Desire for short, was discovered stemming out of the Gecko Genetics line tangerines. When Jason sold off his collection 2 males were found to have carried the gene on. One went to Designer geckos and one went to GeckoBoa Reptiles. Offspring sold to European breeders (Lydie Verger & Fran Lhotka) from Designer geckos exposed the gene for the first time in that line. John at GeckoBoa Reptiles had noticed the gene pop up around the same time but wanted to do some more test breeding before any public announcements. It has since been proven that the gene acts recessive. ^[2]