Hello, hope you don't mind a couple questions!
When you're looking at your Het/Pos Het Superstripes or potential low visual superstripes, what are your indicators that you're looking for that arent the stripe?
Do you have any like defined things or visual guides that you have posted anywhere for those looking to kind of determine that?
I think this was sent ages ago, sorry! There is a range of expression for both visuals and hets.
The visual form for Jablonski super stripe is a tri-striped animal. The full expression of the tri-stripe looks like this: a solid dorsal pattern with 3 unbroken, internal, light stripes.
Oftentimes the tri-striping is on the upper body, and does not extend all the way down the tail.
Reverse striping is also possible on the back end.
More visuals, these I produced:
Just like any gene, there's a range of expression, so lower expression visuals may have more breaks in the pattern, chain linking, or a less full dorsal stripe, or a combination such that it's difficult to say for sure... and high expression hets can have just enough of the inner striping to throw doubt into the mix.
Some examples of ambiguous animals:
This animal has some tri-striping but it's lower body, broken, and has a lot of chain linking. I never proved her out.
This animal has some solid tri-striping on its neck and lots of broken pattern and chain linking down below.
In my current experience, JSS hets generally don't have any solid tri-striping. They tend to have chain linking, more broken patterns, singular striping, solid tail stripes, a couple connected saddles, and/or abstract patterns inside the dorsal stripe.
These are some examples of high expression hets (obviously hypo will influence the look, as well):
One of the DH VPI T+/SS kids, very typical single stripe going on:
OT hypo aby poss het (prob het) SS:
'Poss' het sibs - the one on the right could potentially be a low expression visual, but I'll have to prove her out to know for sure.
Lower expression hets tend to have a couple connected saddles, or some sort of backend or tail striping.
Or they can look normal.
There's a lot of work to be done on this project still. The main issue with it, currently, is that a handful of folks have taken ambiguously striped/patterned animals, did not prove them out to be visual JSS, and combined them with other pattern amplifying genes (*cough* jungle *cough*) to produce high expression stripes. That they then label and sell as visual JSS, with no mention of jungle. No one unfortunately would know the difference unless they saw the lineage.
Too many people are quick to label a nice single stripe het or even a half striped animal as a visual, as well. Recessive projects take years to curate, and getting an animal in that was sold as a visual (or a het) that doesn't prove is not only massively frustrating, but can be a costly setback.
So if you have an animals that you're uncertain about, just be prepared to prove them out if you want to know for sure.
Some JSS pairings I've done, if you'd like to see more:
OT hypo harly het SS x SS
OT hypo harly het SS x ultimate aby
OT hypo SS x VPI T+ Motley
I should have at least two litters of 100% hets this season from different pastel girls, as well.
