When starting a breeding program

mychamtini112012

New Member
Do you want a male with amazing colors or a female with amazing blood lines.? I don't a thing about the genetics of a chameleon, so I do not know where most the the color and genes come from. Any one know.?
 
personally,
I would look at the colors of the male, AND the bloodline of the female.


and the overall health of both animals of course.
 
Well, since you get 50% of your genetics from each parent, I would argue that each parent is equally important. Some people say that the male's genetics matter more (when breeding snakes, geckos, etc.) but I've never found any reason behind this that made sense.

I think if you were starting a serious project you would have to look at both bloodlines, not just the individual male you have. If you like your male you probably like his father, but if you can find your male's mother's father that would give you an even better idea of what he carries. And then with your female do the same thing, find one with a father you love, check out her mother's father, and if you can see them, check out photos of her brothers. That would give you a good idea of what you're getting in future generations.
 
I've had a female produce males from her first clutch that looked just like the father, and several out of the 2nd clutch that resembled a mix of the mother's sire and the father. I also got a few that did not really resemble either so it really is hard to tell what you are going to get unless you have really similar trates on both sides. Even with both similar lines Ambilobes, for example, are hard to determine what you are going to get with babies as they are so diverse bb/rb rb/bb ob/rb ob/bb (rb/bb =redbodied/blue bar so you get what I am saying).. JMO
 
True. I understand what you were saying. Well the genetics and everything is something that really interestes me. If anyone knows any good articles I'd love to read them! Thanks for everyone's answer. Anyone has impute I'll be glad to read that too. :)
 
Draw a punnet square, take it as far as you want with the information you can get and you should get a percentage possibility for certain colorations. Their colors are like fingerprints. Sometimes it is a crap shoot.
 
Well, I mean, mitosis is mitosis. You will get an even divide of 50% of the chromosomes from one parent, and 50% from another and form a new individual. But, that doesn't mean that you get an even half of the traits. So here we go back to Mendelian genetics - if you mix a tall plant with a short plant, you're not going to get 100% medium-height plants. Or a red flower with a white flower will not give you 100% pink flowers.

Like with us, my mom is blonde and my father has black hair - I came out with blonde hair and my sister got brown hair. Or you see those families where all the children look A LOT like mom, or they all look a lot like dad, or they look like more or less a good mix of both. In a clutch the same would happen, between one factor and another, you can get clutches that show varying percentages of traits from their parents. Some look like dad, some look like mom, some look like both, and some look like neither.

So to echo what Reptoman said, you have to have lines with very similar traits to increase your chances of the same genes making it to the surface, as it were. For example, my male is a cross but his father is a very blue Faly, and he is a very blue chameleon. When I picked out his girlfriend, I looked for a bloodline with a lot of blue as well. So her father is a pure Nosy be and her brothers look almost like pure Nosy be's as well with a lot of blue. So I have a certain level of certainly that their offspring, even though they're crosses and have more at play, will show a large percentage of blue.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys. :) so if I ever start my own breeding I will look for a female who will hopefully carry the same traits in her bloodlines as the male carries in his. That would probably get the best chance, at least that's what I've gotten from this. Haha.
 
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