Pastel Genetic Compatibility Question

Are the different strains of pastels genetically compatible? For example, can you breed a Graziani pastel with a Bell pastel and produce super pastels? What about a lemon pastels and blond pastels are they genetically compatible with other pastels or only their own type of pastel?

Does anyone know of a website that has a decent compatibility list for Ball Pythons?

Thanks.
Don Flickner

It will be hard to confirm compatibility between pastel lines. The best way I can think of will be to make what you think is a super by crossing two pastel lines and then breed that super to lots of normals and see if you only produce pastels or not. I've yet to hear much in the way of breeding results for any super pastels much less ones created by crossing different lines.

The thing is, what if two pastel lines where different genes? You still might get a super effect from the combination. They could still stack on top of each other to make a brighter super pastel snake even without being "compatible". For example, pastel ghosts are brighter than either pastel or ghost by it's self yet they are apparently mutations of completely separate genes. So just producing what looks like a super isn't enough to test for compatibility, you need to prove that that super looking snake is actually homozygous for a single pastel gene by it never giving a normal copy of that gene to a baby. Might take a while to prove, especially if it turns out that two pastel genes are different mutations of different genes that just happen to be close together on the same chromosome.

My personal uninformed guess is that all the pastels might be the same gene and probably also the same exact mutation of that gene with differences in quality determined by combining with other enhancing genes to make the premium pastel lines.

It is my opinion that pastels, at least the widely recognized forms, Bell, BHB, Graziani, NERD, etc., are all the same thing. Other people have the same animals as well but try to represent them as something they are not to increase their selling price. A good example is "stonewashed". The animals like that come from normal pastels as well and are just slightly, very slightly, different than any other pastel you will see. All the founding stock of pastels that most big breeders have origionated as African babies. So I believe you can attribute any difference in color and pattern to local they were collected from and different color/pattern of their parents. Out of several clutches this year I hatched out pastels that varied all over the spectrum of color and pattern. I had banded, faded pattern, super light heads, bright orange, bright yellow, yellow-green like color and on and on. Siblings from pastel x normal will come out of the same clutch and look like different lines. I do not know as much about the blonde pastels but I am also not very impressed with them and do not see why they should sell for a large premium over the standard form.

I agree with Evan 110%.

Theres pastels and supers. Just my take on it.

I agree with Al! Thanks Al. I mean if you think about it, if you produce a super the lines have to be compatible as you have to have to compatible pastels to produce a super. Keep in mind, the pastel is a visible het for the super pastel. If you breed 2 albinos together and get albinos, they were compatible. I am breeding Bell x BHB and Manser x Bell this upcoming season. The only reason I would not get supers is if I just get nailed on the odds not because they are not the same thing. E

Sorry to bring this old thread back up but it has more in it than the new one and I wanted to respond to the last post.

This is why I think phenotype terms like "super" have the potential for confusion but of course they are here to stay. So if two different lines of pastel turned out to be different genes then you may well produce a "super" looking pastel from the combo. Since "super" is just a description of an appearance you could call it a "super pastel" and say that the lines are "compatible". However, if the mutations of the two lines where at different gene loci then your "super" would not be homozygous for a single mutation and would produce about 1/4 normals when bred to a normal. This would be very confusing since super pastels are SUPOSED to produce 100% pastels when crossed with a normal. I don't think this is likely to happen but by talking about "homozygous pastels" rather than "super pastels" we are more precise about what the animal is and what offspring it should produce. Of course in the theoretical situation where there might be two different pastel genes which happen to appear to be "compatible" (another imprecise term) we would probably call it homozygous pastel until breeding results proved it otherwise.

I know this is an old thread but I have the same question and I'm wondering if anyone has proven different lines to be compatible or non-compatible? Such as BHB and Graziani lines bred together to produce a true Super? Anyone with some facts on this topic?

From what I understand, most lines are compatible... I only have one line, so I don't have personal experience, but I have heard of such.