The last few weeks I’ve seen two different snakes marked as het desert ghost after testing positive for A and B on one and A on the other with no mention of DgC on either one. A brief mention I’ve seen in a longer video from RGI had said DgC is desert ghost and the primary gene they are testing for, is this correct? I feel there needs to be some work done to clear the air on this as it seems more than a few people might have animals listed for het desert ghost but possibly not actually het desert ghost and they do not realize it. The first one even had the RGI certificate for A and B and was on auction as a triple het clown, axanthic, dg. I talked to one seller, and then searched quite a bit and couldn’t find anything that strictly clarified which gene is the correct gene now tested for.
Desert Ghost is… an odd one for sure. And I’m not sure if the testing has been updated since the last time info was dropped…but I saw an update from Feb last year that had some test results.
So my understanding of it is if the snake is not carrying homozygous DgC, het DgA and het DgB will not produce a visual. Het a, b and c is not a visual.
The snake has to be Hom DgC to produce visuals. It won’t matter if the A or B are het or hom. only one of them is needed to make Hom C a visual DG.
That is really interesting and odd
You’ll have to bring up this video if you can find it again! I didn’t even know there could be multiple genetic forms (if thats even a proper term for it) of Desert Ghost 
Are there any other BP morphs that are like this??
I know that Yellowbelly has multiple mutations that just all create Ivory when mixed…but I don’t think there are any found yet to be as particular as DG though.
Wow, that’s weird. When I first heard about the different DG genes, I assumed it was a situation like the different lines of albino in boas or leos, where they’re not compatible with one another, but if you get an individual that’s homozygous for one line, you’d get a visual.
Apparently DG decided to be weirder.
I believe the current thinking is that ONLY DGc is required to make a visual desert ghost and it acts as a simple recessive so you can also make desert ghosts with het DGc (not JUST homozygous DGc) but your odds aren’t 100%.
The tests both providers are now just calling “desert ghost” is what RGI once called DGc.
DGa was apparently just a marker that worked most of the time but is completely obsolete now.
I do have serious questions about how DGb is still so prevalent in desert ghost collections in spite of being on a completely different chromosome as DGc. It must have ben selected for somehow. I’m skeptical ball python breeders are selective enough with valuable morphs to have done it on purpose. I mean have a significant quantity of low quality desert ghost been purposely not bred for years? To be fair I have heard a big breeder report they have very little DGb. Other than that breeder and counting the handful of hets I’ve purchased from different sources and tested DGb does seem very common. So I’m personally wanting to keep DGb in my desert ghost project just in case.
Is it possibly the difference between the Enhancer and Desert Ghost lines?
I only have one DG in my collection at the moment so I’m behind the times. Lol
None of the 6 male het DG (ie DGc) males I’ve purchased from different sellers were mentioned to have anything to do with enhancer lines. Half were also het DGb and half were not het DGb. So far I only have babies from the 3 het DGb ones. My sample size is small and one prominent breeder confirms his not het DGb males breed fine. Interestingly in my again very small sample size the NOT het DGb males seem slightly brighter to me. But these are all only het desert ghost (DGc) so unless there is a het effect maybe I shouldn’t be expecting het desert ghosts to be brighter than average.
Maybe you are asking if the breeder who reported very little DGb in his desert ghosts is working with enhancer line? Sorry, I don’t know.
Yup! Sorry for making that unclear. Interesting info regardless though on your group
My sample is too small to put much stock in. Also maybe all the DGb preserved in most desert ghost collections isn’t due to selection pressure but just way more inbreeding than i would have expected this far into the project.
I would love to hear from other big desert ghost breeders who did testing back when DGb was reported as to what percentage of their desert ghosts happened to have DGb, if any were homozygous as opposed to just het DGb, and if they noticed any differences in breeding success or appearance or anything else between desert ghosts that happened to also carry DGb and ones that didn’t.
I guess maybe tagging @t_h_wyman and @rgi to this as well. Not sure how often RGI pops by the forums though
I’ve been bringing my wild DGb theory up for a long time and I believe @t_h_wyman and @rgi may have already politely commented on its dubious theoretical merits. What I’m really still wanting is actual breeding data from people who have produced at least a handful of desert ghost project animals and know the DGb status of the dad’s.
The mutation for these has been proven to be genetically identical, just like with Butter/Lesser or Candy/Toffee, so any difference between them would be selective breeding within the lines
.
.
.
It is just selective breeding. This is the same reason we had the whole “Fader”/“Whiteout”/“Duper” thing with Pastels and HC in Albinos and the like. the “b gene” is just a hanger-on that was enriched in the morph because it being present boosted the appearance of the visual
I was mostly thinking about DGa vs DGb. I know enhancer and DG are identical. But I more meant that most Enhancer lines may have been expressing hom DGc and one of the other two more often? I haven’t looked at the stats and exact breakdowns, but was thinking an Enhancers may tend to carry DGa more than DGb sort of thing. Or vice versa
Edit: basically also boils down to the whole problem with BP keepers not keeping lineages as well. Like how some just started listing all Butters as Lessers even though they’re butter lineage. Or in my collection’s case… My not Baker line special I need to test now. Lol. Mostly for my own curiosity and breeding plans.
RGI did get over 500 pictures from DGa, b, and c animals and were unable to find any notable difference in terms of visual expression with A and B, all that matters is that C is present and homozygous. The free desert ghost spreadsheet that RGI did is still available to anyone who wants to examine it or play around with the data.
Hence the identical part, yes. The only real difference is polygenic in nature for the particular animals.
If I have time I can go over the info and pick it apart and see if that idea of lineage inheritance is a thing. Which if DG tends to have more B as mentioned above, then enhancer should have more A.
It could be the reason OP’s question animal that was het a and b didn’t have c. Het enhancer to het DG breeding and neither passed the het C. So that animal is technically not het DG as it’s missing the necessary DGc to crossover. And also why it was so tricky sometimes to hit DGs for some breeders. (What would be the term in this case? Pseudo het? Lol)
Ah… Gotcha. That I do not know
My caution here is that those 500 different pics were all likely independently edited 500 different ways which would account for their uniformity in appearance. A more definitive graphic would have been to have 500 actual animals laid out side by side by side
That would, indeed, be more telling. However, understandably they don’t have the ability to do that, as folks are able to send pictures of their DG animals but for many reasons they can’t receive 500 physical animals. To be fair, most of the pictures look remarkably unedited - I went through all 500 to help them label them as visual DG or het, and there was quite a variety in appearance.
Thanks for the link inspirationexotics! I’ll try to fire up a laptop to do some percentage calculations I’ve been interested about for years. Really wish it had a “proven breeder?” column.
I did hear something a few weeks ago on an RGI podcast about I think it was JKR going over their desert ghosts and NOT finding a DGb correlation with appearance. I’ve never really thought ball python breeders were selective enough with high $ morphs to only breed the best looking ones. Unless some genetic desert ghosts (i.e. homozygous DGc) were so ugly they couldn’t be identified as desert ghosts i would expect someone to breed them. But maybe less offspring than the best looking holdbacks so maybe it could eventually make a difference.