REPTILE CULTURE

SPECIES GUIDE / lizard

Leopard geckos

Eublepharis macularius

Leopard geckos are ground-dwelling lizards from dry, often rocky habitats in South Asia, including parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India. Wild-type hatchlings have bold bands that give way to the familiar dark spots as they grow. Captive-bred morphs can change that pattern, the amount of pigment, or both.

Natural history: Agarwal et al. (2022) · Ullate-Agote & Tzika (2024)

Illustration of a pale lavender leopard gecko in a curved pose, with two dark stripes framing a cream back
Reptile Culture · AI-generated illustration

Genetics at a glance

A recessive trait usually takes two copies to show. An incomplete dominant trait can look different with one copy than with two. Breeders often call Mack Snow “co-dom”; this guide uses “incomplete dominant” because Mack Snow and Mack Super Snow are visibly different forms. A gecko can carry more than one trait, and a photo cannot establish its complete genetics.

MORPH INDEX

Browse morphs

Albino

Tremper, Bell and Rainwater can look similar, but research points to different genes for the three strains. Keep the exact strain in an animal’s records.

Snow

Several leopard gecko lines go by Snow. Mack Snow and Mack Super Snow are the one- and two-copy forms of the same variant. Gem and Albey lines have their own records.

Other morphs

Named combinations

These names describe a combination of traits or a breeding project. The individual components matter when recording an animal’s genetics.