Trait Recognition and Evidence

This draft is in preparation and is not yet in force. No trait is recorded under it until The Reptile Club adopts it.

Scope and authority

This Standard establishes the evidence on which The Reptile Club recognizes a trait, the classes in which a recognized trait is recorded, and the language the Registry uses when a trait is published on a Certificate of Pedigree. It applies to every species for which the Registry publishes structured traits. Where the Registry publishes no structured traits for a species, no trait is recorded on the Certificate of Pedigree for an animal of that species, and no claim about inheritance is made. The traits recognized for a particular species are established in that species' own Standard, under the requirements set out here.

The authority for this Standard rests with The Reptile Club, as the publishing body of the Registry. A standards committee applies it as written, under the procedure its charter sets.

This Standard does not regulate husbandry, breeding practice, or what a breeder calls an animal in their own sales material. It governs only the words by which the Registry records a trait.

Recognition and the producer's determination

Which terms may be recorded, and in which class, is settled by the Standard for the species. Which of those terms describes a particular animal is recorded on the producer's determination, as set out in the Pedigree Terms and Lineage Documentation Standard. The Registry does not inspect the animal and conducts no genetic testing, and its review of a photograph submitted with a registration is not an examination of the animal and is not a check of a recorded trait.

The Certificate of Pedigree asserts nothing about an animal's morph beyond what the producer recorded at registration, and this Standard does not alter that. This Standard settles the vocabulary available to the producer, the class to which each term belongs, and the meaning the Registry attaches to each term. The record of a trait for an individual animal remains the producer's statement, made in the Registry's vocabulary.

The evidence available for morph traits

For most reptile morphs there is no published molecular characterization. Where such work exists, as it does for certain traits in a small number of species, the Registry may rely on it. Where it does not, the evidence available is the breeding record, and the Registry states its recognition in those terms rather than as settled science.

The Registry does not describe a trait as scientifically established, genetically confirmed, or proven where the evidence is breeding observation. In that case the most the Registry records is documented inheritance reproduced across unrelated lines.

The ranking of evidence

Evidence is ranked from strongest to weakest as follows.

1. Peer-reviewed molecular or genetic science in the species in question, meaning work that identifies a locus, a candidate mutation, or a mapped linkage. Science published without peer review, and peer-reviewed science about the species that is not tied to the trait in question, are citable for context and are not treated as establishing the trait.
2. Independently reproduced breeding records with counts, meaning controlled crosses whose scored offspring counts and ratios are reproduced across multiple unrelated lines whose founders were sourced separately.
3. Single-source or single-colony breeding data, meaning one breeder, one founder colony, or a group of breeders who exchange animals. Such a body of data remains one source however many animals it covers.
4. Consensus in the hobby and framing in the marketplace, meaning listings, wikis, and forum repetition.
5. Assertion by a seller, meaning a breeder page, blog, or listing that describes a trait as proven or as a new gene.

Everything at the third level and below is a claim rather than documented inheritance. A seller, a marketplace, a breeder page, and a single colony are not independent of the trait they describe. The Registry uses these sources for history, naming, and visual reference, and does not cite them as evidence of inheritance. The default position for any claim not yet examined is that inheritance is not established.

The three classes

Every trait the Registry records falls in one of three classes, and the class determines what the Registry asserts.

Registry-recognized trait

A trait whose inheritance the Registry recognizes for a named species. A trait in this class is the only kind for which the Certificate of Pedigree carries a zygosity state.

Named trait with inheritance not established

A trait the Registry recognizes by name and records as present, without recognizing how it is inherited. The Registry states no inheritance for a trait in this class, in either direction, and the Certificate of Pedigree carries no zygosity state, no inheritance mode, and no het, possible het, visual, or super language for it. The absence of a stated inheritance is the present limit of the Registry's record and not a finding that the trait is not inherited.

Appearance designation

A visible characteristic recorded to describe how the animal appears, under the name the Registry publishes for that species and selected for the animal by the party who recorded it. The Registry does not present the designation as a measurement it has taken. A designation in this class carries no inheritance mode and no zygosity state, and its recording is not a finding that the appearance is free of genetic influence.

The classes are not a ranking of importance. They state what the Registry asserts about a trait, and the evidence each assertion rests on.

Recognizing a trait

A trait enters the Registry-recognized class only where both of the following are documented and open to independent examination.

A consistently observable, distinct characteristic. The characteristic is reliably recognizable across unrelated lines, and distinct from traits already recognized and from ordinary variation. A high-coverage or high-saturation point on a continuous range is not a distinct characteristic. Where a trait is claimed to be dominant or incomplete dominant and the heterozygote is acknowledged to be indistinguishable from non-carriers, the claimed mode is not met. A recessive trait is recognized by its homozygous form, and its heterozygote is not required to be distinguishable from non-carriers.

Documented inheritance, independently reproduced across unrelated lines. The trait is documented by controlled crosses whose scored offspring counts and ratios match a single-locus model. For a recessive trait, an outcross of a visual animal to an unrelated non-carrier produces a first generation with no visual offspring, and a first-generation pairing produces approximately one visual animal in four. For an incomplete dominant trait, an outcross of the heterozygous form produces approximately half visual offspring, and a pairing of two visual animals produces a described homozygous form, or the scored counts show the homozygous quarter of the offspring missing, the record stating which.

Ratios require samples large enough to be meaningful. Where recognition rests on breeding records, the Registry will not recognize inheritance on fewer than thirty scored offspring across the relevant crosses, and meeting that number does not by itself secure recognition. In a species that lays two eggs to a clutch, thirty scored offspring is the yield of at least fifteen clutches, and of more where eggs fail to hatch or a hatchling cannot be scored. Reproduction must come from at least two breeders in separately owned collections, whose outcross animals were sourced separately. The mutant line itself may descend from a single founder animal, since a new mutation arises once. Single-source or single-colony evidence does not reach this class, regardless of how internally consistent it is or how long the claim has stood.

A trait name does not borrow from an established trait name in another species without independent documentation of comparable inheritance in this one.

Where two lines are claimed to carry the same recessive trait, a failure-to-complement cross is the direct test. Two visual animals from the two lines crossed together produce visual offspring where the locus is shared, and non-carriers where it is not. For a trait that is visible in the heterozygote, allelism is established instead by scored counts across the cross, since offspring carrying either allele are visual. Allelism asserted without counts is not established, and lines suspected of sharing a locus are tracked separately until counts exist.

Where those conditions are not met, the Registry takes no position on whether the underlying biology exists. It states only that the evidence before it does not support the assertion, which is a different finding and is published as such.

Where a trait is widely used and visually meaningful but the inheritance is not established on this evidence, the Registry may recognize the name and record the trait as present. A trait in that class carries no het, possible het, visual, super, recessive, incomplete dominant, or dominant language on the Certificate of Pedigree.

The state recorded for an individual animal

Recognition establishes what a trait is, and the state a particular animal holds for that trait is recorded separately. The states available are normal, present, het, possible het, visual, and super. Which of them a trait may carry follows from its class and from the inheritance recognized for it, and a trait the Registry carries outside the Registry-recognized class is recorded as present and in no other state.

Each state below is the producer's record of the animal, expressed in the Registry's vocabulary. The definition gives the meaning the Registry attaches to the word, and none of these states is a finding the Registry has made about the animal.

Normal

The producer's affirmative record that the animal shows the ordinary form of the trait, which is distinct from a trait left unrecorded.

Present

The producer observed the trait on the animal, with no statement of zygosity.

Het

The producer's determination that the animal carries one copy of a recessive allele.

Possible het

The parents on file leave open whether the animal carries the allele, without establishing that it does.

Visual

The producer's determination that the animal expresses the trait: the homozygous form of a recessive trait, or the heterozygous form of an incomplete dominant trait.

Super

The homozygous form of an incomplete dominant trait.

A recorded state is not always printed as a separate word. Where the state is visual, the Certificate of Pedigree prints the trait name alone. Where the state is het, the certificate prints 100% Het before the trait name. Where the state is normal, the trait is not printed on the certificate. Where the state is present, the certificate prints the trait name alone. The homozygous form of an incomplete dominant trait is published under the name the Registry gives that form for the species, and the Registry publishes no such name where the form is not viable.

A possible het may be printed with a percentage, in forms such as 66% Het and 50% Het. That percentage is a statement about the parents on file and the inheritance recognized for the trait, rather than a finding about the animal. An animal recorded with a percentage either carries the allele or does not, and the figure describes the proportion of the pairing's offspring of ordinary appearance expected to carry it. Where the parents on file support no figure, possible het is not recorded, and a claim of carriage that the parents on file do not support remains the producer's own record and does not reach the certificate.

Carrying an appearance designation

A trait is recognized by inheritance. An appearance designation is settled by definition. The two are different problems, and applying the evidence test above to a descriptive term is a category error, because there is no discrete thing to prove where the characteristic is a continuum.

A designation is carried where it names a visible characteristic a producer can apply to an animal, and where the term is in current use among keepers of the species.

The Registry does not measure the characteristic, and does not assess whether a producer has applied the term well. Loose or inconsistent use in the market is not a ground for declining a name. The remedy for a term used loosely is a published definition, which is what this Standard and the species Standards exist to supply.

A designation is declined on one of three grounds, and on no other.

• It names no characteristic a producer could identify.
• It duplicates a designation the Standard already carries.
• It asserts, by its name or its usual use, an inheritance the Registry has not recognized.

The Registry publishes every designation it carries. Where a designation is a term of art, or where its use among keepers differs from ordinary English, the Registry publishes a definition with it. A designation whose ordinary meaning is its meaning here carries the term alone, and the Registry publishes the term without defining the word.

Where a definition names a threshold, the threshold is part of it. Where a definition names no threshold, the Registry sets none, and the designation is recorded on the producer's determination under its definition. A designation that carries no definition carries no threshold either, and is recorded on the producer's determination under the term itself. Where a designation carries Super or Extreme in its name, the word is part of the market's name for a look and is not a zygosity claim.

Names and aliases

The Registry writes correct English and aliases the market's spellings, it does not imitate them. An alias resolves a market name into the term whose look it names, and only where the look matches. A name for a het form does not resolve to the term for the expressed form, and a name for a lower expression does not resolve to the term for an extreme one. Each species Standard publishes the aliases it carries alongside the terms they resolve to.

One trait, several claims

A trait can raise more than one question, and each is decided on its own evidence. Whether a trait is inherited in a particular way, whether its homozygous form carries a welfare finding, and whether it is allelic to another trait are three claims, not one. A claim that fails does not carry the others with it, and recognition of a trait's inheritance does not extend to the welfare or allelism claims made about that trait.

What a shared name imports

A trait name established in another species imports no inheritance into this one. Inheritance is a property of a specific mutation in a specific species, demonstrated by crosses within it. The same appearance arises from different genes in different species, and within a single species the same appearance recurs from separate loci. Terminology borrowed from another species is a hypothesis to be tested with this species' own scored crosses, and is not recorded as a finding.

Welfare findings

Where selection for a trait is shown to carry a welfare consequence, the Registry records a welfare finding for that trait and publishes the record the finding rests on. A welfare finding is a statement about documented outcomes. It is not a judgment of the breeders who produce the trait.

A welfare or lethality statement traced to a single source is published as reported by that source rather than as a finding of the Registry. Where this Standard or a species Standard states such a claim, the text names the source in the same sentence that carries the claim.

Language the Registry does not use

The Registry does not use phrasing that implies molecular or published proof for a trait that lacks it. It does not print a zygosity state, an inheritance mode, or het language for a trait outside the Registry-recognized class. It does not publish an inheritance claim sourced only to a seller, a marketplace, or a single colony, and it does not publish a welfare or lethality claim as a settled fact where its evidence is single-source. It does not state an inheritance mode it has not recognized, in either direction. A trait not shown to be polygenic is not published as polygenic, and a trait not shown to be single-locus is not published as a gene.

Submissions

Evidence regarding inheritance continues to develop, and the Registry expects its recognitions to change with it. A breeder or researcher who believes a trait should be considered may submit a statement of the proposed trait and the characteristic it names, the claimed inheritance, breeding records across multiple generations with scored offspring counts and outcomes, evidence that the trait has been produced by unaffiliated breeders, photographic documentation, and any relevant publications. Submissions may be addressed to registry@reptileclub.com.

A submission is evaluated against the requirements established here. A submission that arrives without the evidence this Standard requires is returned to the party who made it rather than docketed. Where a committee is seated for the species, a docketed submission is that committee's to rule on. Recognition is not guaranteed.

Committees and commercial interest

The Reptile Club convenes a committee for each species for which it publishes structured traits. Where a committee is seated for a species, recognition under this Standard is the committee's to rule on. The Committee recommends, and The Reptile Club adopts and publishes. The Reptile Club may decline to adopt a recommendation, and records the reason when it does. It may not place a trait at a higher class than the Committee recommended, and may not add a trait the Committee did not recommend. What else a committee rules on, and the procedure by which a recommendation enters a Standard, are set by that committee's charter. Until a committee is seated for a species, recognition for that species rests with The Reptile Club alone.

The Reptile Club publishes the evidence relied on for each trait recognized, so far as it holds the right to publish that material.

The Reptile Club does not breed or sell animals. The members of a species committee are working breeders of that species. Their interests are declared and published with the committee's roster, and voting and recusal are governed by the committee's charter.

Publication and revision

Every recognition, every refusal, and every welfare finding publishes with the evidence it rests on and enters the decision log of the species Standard. No entry in that log is removed or rewritten once written.

A refused claim publishes a statement of the evidence that would change the answer, in The Reptile Club's words.

The Reptile Club issues this Standard in numbered issues. A later issue supersedes an earlier one from the date it publishes, and the earlier issue remains on the record. A later issue may refine the ranking of evidence, the classes, or the requirements for recognition. Where a trait is recognized or withdrawn under a later issue, what the Certificate of Pedigree displays changes from the date of that issue.