I brought up this exact point a while ago but no one ever answered the question - in the tegu world is a critter's lineage/provenance important or not?
And, not to put too find a point on it, but I will not accept critters into my collection if they came from certain sources even with good provenance.
Depends on the person. When I was into leopard geckos, there was a common push from community members that certain bigger-name breeders had special quality differences relative to small-time, three-geckos-on-the-dresser-in-one's-bedroom breeders/keepers. I did not find that message to be the case most of the time, but sometimes bigger names had enough animals to drive a distinct enough line (which is really a subdivision of a subdivision in the bigger picture) to make me want to incorporate such a line into my collection for either a more directed purpose, to be able to offer that lineage, or to provide some sort of diversity (which is often an overblown and less than impressive thing in reality when dealing with some gene pools or even some organisms) to a project's components.
When I was starting out with partnered albino blue tegu work (which was really not that long ago; a few years), I was perfectly fine getting things from an alternative line (which seems every bit as nice and robust) and using more "promoted name-driven" lines (of which one of those lines is from Taesoon's stock) for outcrossing or het-making as part of the program.
Likewise on acceptance criteria. I, too, have a list of sources I refuse to incorporate into my projects (with multiple potential reasons; some reasons being tangible and others intangible).
Ty calls his t+ albinos purples when the purple tegu is a blue red hybrid. That's where some confusion came in.
Marketing-driven confusion. Because people slap names on stuff so easily, this results. There are purple albinos, purples, purple tiger this-and-thats, and so on. People use purple to mean different things and that screws it up. Heck, some people tack a word onto blue that implies a quality difference and actually also includes an implied reference to a hybrid component. Then someone gets lazy and stops mentioning the hybrid component and some person is buying something he/she thinks is something else based on the naming. Anyone who knows me knows I like a lot of pure stuff AND a lot of well-defined hybrid stuff, but maintenance of the label when dealing with matters of hybrids is critically important for honest representation. Unfortunately, that breaks down with some people. Not all. Not most. Some. "T+" and "T-" are also severely abused by reptile people, most of whom have done no testing for tyrosinase activity and do not even know what that really means anyway. "Oh, it is a little darker overall? Oh, that one over there has more vibrant color or something different about its eyes? Well, we will call that T+ because...reasons." As a group, we do a disservice to ourselves with that junk.
To my knowledge, the "purples" by Ty are an albino/amel blue marketing name for the darker-toned ones. It has been suggested that the lines are not different and it is individual variability within the same genetic defect. I do not know that to be fact, but all one needs is a test breeding to figure that out. I suspect that has already been performed and the appeal of the purples to some will fade and the pricing will fall (and this latter part has been happening recently...curious) in response. This may be due to a change in demand or may be strategic action by sellers. The backlash of having your customers know you charged them around twice as much for the same morph with a different level of expression is going to be much worse than if you put a smaller premium on those animals ($2500 to $3000 does not sting nearly as much as $2500 to $5000 and a person dropping $2500 can more easily afford the "pain" of an extra $500 compared to the "pain" of an extra $2500). ESPECIALLY if the breeders know there is or might not be a genetic difference. There are several other smaller-scale breeders who use the same label in the same way. Yet other breeders also use "purple" labeling for tegus to mean hybrid types. Since selling communities like to fragment with individuals trying to promote their offerings as different and sellers apparently find themselves clever with stupid names (including renaming things that already have an established label), an unfamiliar person can be confused and make a decision he/she is not intending to make.
