I might ramble a bit here, so please bear with me!
To the best of my understanding, leopard geckos don’t express true green coloration the way other reptile species do (I’d be happy to be corrected if I’m wrong). They have melanophores (black/brown pigment cells), xanthaphores (yellow/orange pigment cells), and iridiphores (iridescent /reflective cells).
That means that when you see green undertones in a leopard gecko, it’s a combination of color theory playing tricks on your perception of color (something cool toned next to saturated orange will appear green perceptually), and light refracting through different dermal layers and pigments (think of the way a prism turns white light into a rainbow or light cast through red glass casting red reflections).
So, with that in mind, I have a hypothesis. I think that if you could take an emerine gecko (or other green-toned morph) and magically strip away orange and yellow expression, the coloration left over would be lavender.
I have no idea if anybody has tested this out through morph combos!
For example, if you take morphs that suppress orange and yellow coloration, such as snow morphs or ghost, and you selectively combined those genetics with emerine, you might end up with lavender expressing offspring.
I don’t know if anybody would want to take the time to do that, but I do know that lavender can be pretty difficult to line breed for. But, on the other hand, breeders working with emerine and other green morphs have been really pushing the envelope recently. That means that those line bred traits can be very strong and act dominant when outcrossed.
I also think that if you wanted to start an experimental breeding project (I know there’s somebody out there who does), you could take somebody’s “low quality” emerine geckos (or even clown, firebold, Pacific green, etc) that they’re selling cheap because they aren’t expressing strong orange saturation and see if you can utilize those strong cool-toned polygenetics to get more robust lavender geckos that retain their expression well.
I’d love to hear your thoughts if you read this far! I have no idea if I’m on the right track, but it’s something I’m very curious about!
