Breeding crested geckos is an art in the sciences when it comes to genes. There are so many layers of color in a gecko’s skin and each gene has its own role to changing appearance. The geckos below have helped me in my understanding these genes and I’ve shared some of what I learned about their patterns.
Male Crested Geckos
Ferris Bueller
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Black base with Hypo
Ferris is an avid color changer! His base coloration goes from a light blue to an olivey green, to several colors of grey. Sometimes he even chooses brown.
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Ferris has a lot of Orange coverage! Most of this is Orange Pattern which fades to a tan when he sleeps. He has very little white on his body, only on his pinstripes and tail, due to Tangerine.
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Ferris has Dalmation spots across his body, some of which are red and some that are green!
Zezima
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Though Zezima is a Black Base he is usually a green color when fired up. He gets pretty dark in color when he wants but is so mellow he’s usually unfired. He also has undertones of yellow so he potentially has Yellow Base.
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Zezima’s White Pattern is a very crisp white. Being nearly a full Pinstripe, and having lots of splotches across his body, gives his White Pattern lots of opprotunity to pop!
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Zezima’s Orange Pattern lies mainly on his back but also on his feet and legs. There are a few areas on his sides with it as well that makes him a harlequin pattern.
Wicken
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Wicken is an interesting gecko for several reasons, one of these reasons is because he is a Black Base. While that sounds pretty standard, he comes from two Red Base parents…
He has lightened in color as he’s gotten older, he was a tricolor as a young adult.
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When it comes to White Pattern, Wicken sure is covered in it, some of it used to orange but you’d never know since his color faded as he got older.
Female Crested Geckos
Veruca
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What drew us to Veruca when we saw her at an expo was how dark she fired up. It was a very stark contrast to her white pattern and fired down she is a light ashy grey.
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Veruca has a lot of bright White Pattern across her body. Since it is such a strong amount of White Pattern, it doesn’t darken with the rest of her colors.
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Veruca has a slight amount of Orange Pattern, she probably looked somewhat like a tricolor as a baby. As she got older that orange faded and now blends in with the white in a lot of cases.
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Veruca is sprinkled with Snowflakes, it contributes a lot to her White Pattern.
Dr. Pepper
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Black Base with Yellow Base
Pepper is an funky combination of Black base layering with Yellow Base and Hypo to make a greenish, yellowish, blueish base color. Fired up she’s more of a dark brown.
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Zezima’s White Pattern is a very crisp white. Being nearly a full Pinstripe, and having lots of splotches across his body, gives his White Pattern lots of opprotunity to pop!
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Though she doesn’t have a lot of them, Pepper has a few Dalmation spots speckles across her.
Yerzi
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I suppose this one is obvious but Yerzi is Red Base. Fired down she is an odd pink color and her White Pattern is lined with Orange Pattern. Her Hypo helps to make her a brick red when fired up.
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Yerzi’s White Pattern is accentuated with her Hypo to make it a toothpaste white. This white color doesn’t change when she fires up and down.
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Hypo can sometimes be hard to identify in crested geckos but in Yerzi it makes all her colors pop! Fired down she has some color layering of colors as which makes her an odd pinkish.
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Next to her Red Base and White Pattern, Yerzi’s Orange Pattern is like flames across her back. This is helped by her Emptyback which leaves a column for the pattern to spread,
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I wasn’t sure Yerzi had Emptyback until all of her babies came out with het markings for it. It blends in with her Pinstripe pattern and flame markings.
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Though incomplete Yerzi has Pinstripe genes that give her partial quadstripe patterning with lines on her back as well as sides.