shatter crested gecko
a continuing study
last updated 11/1/23
shatter crested gecko
a continuing study
last updated 11/1/23
INTRODUCTION
Hi all! For those of you who don’t know us, our names are Quincy & Sofi and we’re the owners of Seta Reptiles. We’re based in Miami, FL and have been working with and breeding Crested Geckos for a combined 15 years.
We wanted to do a soft introduction of a project we’ve been working on/with for the past 2 years. We’ve named this project Shatter. There’s still a lot of work and research to be done on this as we continue to explore how it’s passed down but we wanted to share what we’ve been working on.
Please keep in mind that this information continues to evolve as we study the characteristic. Due to that, we won’t be sharing too many details as we want to provide only proven information and avoid confusion or misinformation. However, there are clear distinctions that have been made between this characteristic and others that behave similarly. So far we have observed it combined with Flame, Harlequin, and Pin. It seemingly affects the primary pattern color in the geckos that have it.
WHAT WE'VE LEARNED SO FAR
Please see the section below (“Our Start with Shatter”) for details on how we’ve observed it passing down from parent to offspring.
There’s at least one marker that is present in all Shatters and that is the disruption of all pattern color in the entirety of the dorsal and laterals— from head to base of tail and sometimes on the tail as well. If pattern color is not affected evenly (jagged/shattered) on the head as well as everywhere else with pattern color, it is likely not present in that animal. It’s harder to discern in tricolor animals and advanced phenotypes since the primary pattern color seems to be the one mainly affected. Base color comes through on the shattered areas, both on the dorsal and on the laterals. Characterized by jagged breaks in color pattern. The base color coming through looks grainy & makes the pattern color look almost like shattered glass. The expression of shattering described is different from the pattern disruption created by the Empty Back & Cappucino traits which both affect dorsal pattern. It’s important to note that the shattering occurs in an irregular way. It presents as a very organic disruption of the tiger that’s present in all crested geckos. A good way to describe the visual effect it has on pattern color is to think of it as wood grain, as the pattern bears a resemblance. We’ve speculated that there could potentially be a horizontal disruption of the vertical tigering that’s present and therefore affecting how the breaks in pattern color appear. This characteristic affects pattern and the result is, as described by Anthony Vasquez (LMR), “aberrant reticulated patterning.”
The Shatter phenotype bears some resemblance to the Pixel trait, but after comparing our animals several Pixel examples provided by Anthony Caponetto and others, we believe it’s a separate characteristic. Is it possible to some degree that Pixel is a contributing trait? Yes. We can’t yet discount that with 100% certainty. But considering the effect we are now seeing across all the animals, we believe it to be separate. It can also look similar to some examples of Harlequin & Extreme Harlequin. However, the markers we’ve observed for Shatter are not present in Pixels or Harleys/Extreme Harleys and vice versa. The primary difference we’ve observed between Shatter and Pixel is the spread of the pattern disruption. In Shatter animals, the disrupted areas are farther apart and somewhat larger than the areas in Pixel. In Shatter animals, we see jagged edges in the areas where base color comes through as opposed to the more rounded or clean edges seen on other morphs.
This is all that we’ve been able to discern so far. We will continue to have more specifics as this season unfolds and share our progress with you all.
Our start with shatter
We first noticed this characteristic in 2020 and identified it in 2021. We’ve been working on it ever since. For a while, we weren’t sure what we were noticing so we held back all of the geckos we identified. Now, we have several breeder females identified as possible Shatter. We are still in the very early stages of studying how it presents in general, let alone in advanced phenotypes and combos.
Our first Shatter breeder female, Killgarah (pictured below), is of unknown lineage. We purchased her locally and without parentage in 2018. This past season, we paired her to a light red base Phantom male in hopes of proving out the dominance of this characteristic when paired to something completely different. The results were as we thought. Half of the offspring displayed the Shatter characteristic while the other half were what you’d expect from such a pairing if nothing else was at play. We’ve held back all of her offspring. This coming season will be the first time we will pair Shatter to Shatter as we’ve only been able to pair Shatter to established traits thus far. We will begin pairing in December 2023 and should hopefully see some results in the months after. But as it stands we’re seeing it behave dominantly across all offspring of our Shatter marked breeders. We won’t know the specifics of inheritance for some time. All we can say so far is how it behaves.
We’ve been growing out all of Killgarah’s offspring along with other animals we’ve identified as possible Shatters. Many of the aforementioned secondary animals can be traced back to AC Reptiles stock. Though none of those have been proven, we believe the characteristic is also present in his collection. As such, we’ve been discussing this project with Anthony Caponetto for a while and have been sharing information with each other in the interest of studying it further. We have also done so with Anthony Vasquez from LMR who is also working on this this project as well (our animals are not related).
