Caramel

Caramel is an incomplete dominant mutation.

Cristos Skliris had them pop up from a clutch of normal-looking coastals in France. Surprisingly the first ones were very black in color.

In 2003, Paul Harris acquired several pairs of Caramel Coastals from him. These babies were red in color with no noticeable black markings at all, only very fine brown edging to some of the pattern. Paul was quite confident that the trait would be reproducible as the babies looked different from the “normal" reds babies that are sometimes found in Coastal clutches.

In 2006 Paul bred a male Coastal Jaguar Carpet to a female Caramel. He hatched some normal looking Jaguars and Coastals as well as a Caramel Jaguar and Caramel babies from that pairing. So it seems that the trait was incomplete dominant and he had hatched a double co-dom Caramel Jaguar!

In 2007 he tried the same pairing again along with a second pairing, a male Caramel to a female Coastal Jaguar. Both clutches contained Caramel Jaguars and Caramels as well as normal Jaguars and Coastals.

He also bred Caramel to Caramel for the first time in 2007. The outcome from 19 eggs from this clutch was also consistent with it being an incomplete dominant trait, there were 10 Caramels, 5 normals, and 4 “Super” Caramels. The supers were even brighter than their Caramel clutch mates and completely lacked any dark scales or markings altogether.

In 2009 he bred a male ‘Super’ Caramel to a normal coastal and hatching all Caramel babies, finally proving the mutation to be incomplete dominant.