MorphMarket News

Announcing Breeding Plans!

Breeding Plans will help you plan, track, and promote your projects.

• Experiment with pairings and visualize possible outcomes
• View expected combined outcomes for your entire season
• Share projects, expectations and results with the community

You can access the Breeding Manager using the "Breeding" item on the menu or the beaker icon.

The basic steps are as follows:

1. Add your not-for-sale breeding animals to your collection if you haven't already done so.
2. Activate the breeding adults which you want to work with this season.
3. Pair up male to females or females to males.

After creating pairings, you can do things like:

• View the combined outcomes which are possible from all the pairings using the "Outcomes" button.
• Share individual pairings by setting their visibility to public. These will show up in the MorphMarket Projects section of the site.
• Share your entire breeding plan. It will include all public pairings.
• Create Offspring Groups from the pairings as females ovulate. From here you can later easily generate the offspring, which can then be turned into listings.

The best part is that Breeding Plans are available to all MorphMarket users free of charge. Members get extra benefits with no new costs, such as the ability for other users to browse, search and get alerts on their project activity.

Upcoming improvements include:

• Breeder Waitlists for buyers to engage sellers on potential offspring
• Recording breeding activity such as pairing events, locks, and follicle sizes
• Multiple breeding plans

Learn more about Breeding Plans by watching the video above and by reading our support article or try it out right now!

MorphMarket Projects: Plan. Pair. Promote.

We haven't added any new top level categories in 18 months, but we just promoted four today!

All of these were subcategories which now enjoy full category status. For these herps you can now enjoy all the functionality that makes finding amazing animals so easy on MorphMarket, including ads indexed by trait tags, subcategories, store directories, and calculators.

The newly minted categories are:

• Chameleons
• Tegus
• Tree Boas
• Bullsnakes

You might wonder, how did we choose these? Occasionally, we add new subcategories to group ads which are in the "other" buckets. Then, we monitor these subcategories and when they get large enough, we promote them.

We do not claim that our data is perfect, but we are always updating and improving it and we welcome your feedback. The best place for input is in our community subforum which has a form that you can fill out. In particular, there is more room for us to better organize the Tegus category.

If you have ads in these new categories, you might want to review them to make sure the appropriate traits tags have been added. You can add tags by modifying the ads and updating the traits field with the relevant tags.

We hope you enjoy these changes. We are all about improving our data, design and functionality to be the best online resource for connecting the community of herp lovers.

What do you think we promote next? The isopods and spiders are looking ripe!

Read the January Newsletter for a recap of what we're up to right now.

Announcing MorphMarket Projects!

If you're a keeper, do you want to:

• See what genetics your favorite breeders are working with right now?
• Discover animals that are about to hit the market so you can be first in line?
• Get automatically alerted on hatched animals that meet your specific criteria without even having to check the site?

If you're a breeder, do you want to:

• Market your brand in new ways and to engage and grow your following?
• Generate more excitement around the genetic projects you are working with?
• Reach potential buyers earlier so that your established animals sell quicker?

If so, you are going to love MorphMarket Projects.

MorphMarket Projects creates a whole new way to discover animals & share with the community. Browse, search, and get alerts on breeding activity. Users can discover and engage with animals prior to their listing for sale. Right now this includes offspring groups and in the future will even include pairings!

This kind of sharing and engagement already happens on big tech social media sites every day. So why shouldn't MorphMarket, as the biggest reptile platform in the world, provide you with the same capability? Like our marketplace, our technology is customized to be even more powerful and specific to the community's needs.

Using projects will be familiar because it parallels the system we already have in place for listings.

• Browse: On the trait index page, there's a new tab called Projects. Toggle to this tab to see counts of projects per species and trait.
• Search: Explore all the offspring by breeders using many of the same powerful filters available to Listing search. Offspring cards display information about pairing, offspring count and birth dates.
• Alert: Save searches to get alerted by phone or email new offspring are produced which match the criteria.

Breeders can get their offspring into this system by adding it via the Offspring manager. This is accessed through the Offspring item on the menu or by the egg icon in the sidebar. Offspring groups which meet these criteria will show up publicly for users to see:

• Visibility must be set to Public. Just like with listings, you can choose which items are visible to users and which are for your eyes only.
• Groups need to have at least one parent assigned.
• Either one of the parents or the group needs to have a photo.
• This feature is available to breeders with at least a Basic membership.

This is just the beginning. In the future we will be adding more features for engaging with projects such as:

• Save/favorite offspring groups
• Follow updates on individual groups
• Waitlist or inquire on groups

MorphMarket Projects creates a whole new way for you to explore the community's activity, reach potential buyers, and show off your amazing animals. Let us know what you think!

We’ve updated our policy regarding the use of the Dwarf and Super Dwarf trait tags in reticulated pythons.

In reticulated pythons, the terms Dwarf and Super Dwarf (D and SD) do not refer to "morphs" in the common use of the term. They refer to the locales from which the animals originated.

Very specific islands in Indonesia are home to reticulated pythons that mature at much smaller sizes than their mainland counterparts. Crossbreeding—in particular with mainland retics to introduce morph varieties into the smaller animals—has necessitated the need for clear definitions to help ensure buyers have reasonable expectations for an animal’s mature size.

While an animal’s locality percentage does not provide certainty for the animal’s mature size, it is currently one of the best indicators available.

It’s important to have a definition for these terms for them to be understood and useful. Up until now, we have not enforced any specific definitions for these tags. Going forward, we will be enforcing the industry-accepted definitions for the use of these tags in all current and future MorphMarket ads.

• To use the plain D or SD, the locales in an animal’s lineage must add up to at least 50%. Because SD is a subset of D, SD locales may be included in defining an animal as D, but D locales may not be included in the math used to define SD.
• All retic ads that use the tags D and/or SD must include percentages of locales in the description field. If a seller is unsure, then they may not use those tags. (While not required, we strongly encourage sellers to also include sire and dam with their percentages, when known.)

What can breeders do if exact percentages are not known?

• Locale tags may still be used when the seller is certain of the locale, but either uncertain of % or if less than 50%.
• We have introduced Unknown (Super dwarf) and Unknown (dwarf) tags which can be used like the other locale tags. These can be used without knowing exact locales or percentages.
• Users will still find your animals in all the other ways, including latest listings, genetic traits or other characteristics.

Please review this support article for a full explanation of the definitions and rules MorphMarket will be enforcing when it comes to the use of these two tags.

We understand that this update may be challenging for sellers without known bloodlines; however we believe that it is important for these terms to be meaningful and useful.

We are excited to announce a major update to our genetic calculator. This update adds support for allelic recessive genes. Also known as "visual hets", these are different recessive genes which can combine to create visual outcomes. Read on to learn about this and some other improvements.

1. Support for Allelic Recessives

In 2015, MorphMarket launched its platform with a genetics engine that powered its calculator and trait extractor. This system was later extended to other species.

One innovative feature of our calculator was the support for possible het output. For instance, when breeding a het recessive to a wild type, each baby will be either het or wild type, but a person can't tell from looking which is which. Each baby has a 50% chance of being het, so the calculator will label each one as “50% possible het”.

Yet there was a limitation in that it did not correctly model allelic recessive traits. Output for these combos included a disclaimer explaining that it was not fully modeled.

For example, in Ball Pythons, the Albino trait and the Candy trait are both recessive traits, but they share the same locus. A ball python cannot be both fully Albino and fully Candy, but it can be 50% of each, or "Double Het (DH)" for both. So if you breed a DH Albino Candy to a Normal, the calculator. would output "100% 50% ph Albino and 50% ph Candy". The correct output, which is now displayed, is "100% Het Albino OR Het Candy". This is because either one or the other gene must be passed on to all offspring.

These improvements are not limited to Ball Pythons of course. This fixes issues with visual recessives across Boa Constrictors, Reticulated Pythons, and Corn Snakes, to name a few.

2. Updated Gene Complex Data

We have updated our engine's knowledge of complexes from feedback in our forums. If we are missing any data please comment on this in the appropriate forum discussions.

3. Improved Offspring Generation

If you have used MorphMarket's Offspring Groups to track and advertise your breeding history, you have noticed that our wizard will assist by automatically adding traits to offspring that you add.

Initially, traits added were those which would be inherited 100% of the time. Now, we add traits which are most likely to be inherited, to minimize the number of updates you have to make to those offspring. For example, in a het x het scenario, the system pre-assigns all offspring to be 66% PH. You would now only have to update 25% to visuals, which reduces the data entry by 75%.

4. Simplification of Het Display

A simple but elegant change is that we now display 100% Het traits on the site as just “Het.” Het implies 100%, so there's no need to state this explicitly. This makes the interface a bit cleaner. We still need to update this in the select inputs but it is rendered in the new way on all pages.

5. Maximum Trait Count Increased

The calculator previously refused to process breeding pairs with more than 10 total genes. Thanks to optimizations in the algorithm, it now supports up to 14 traits. This is very helpful in Corn Snakes where there tend to be a high number of traits.

What's Left?

One thing that is still not resolved for ads is the representation of trait disjunctions. That is, the traits on ads do not yet allow sellers to label an animal as having trait A OR B. This is tricky for a few reasons, not the least of which is the interface to input this data.

We're glad to have finally tackled the tough issues mentioned above that pave the way for even more great improvements to come! These were important as we will be leveraging the calculator more extensively throughout the site in features for animal management.

We are preparing to promote a number of new subcategories to top level this year with all the trimmings: trait tags, subcategories, store listings, calculators, etc.

We are conducting a survey of these species and need your input. Would you help us by reviewing our draft and providing feedback on anything we're missing or mistaken about?

The ones ready for you review are:

• Chameleons
• Tree Boas
• Tegus
• Bullsnakes

Thanks! John

Read the End of Year Newsletter for some exciting updates, what's planned, and a recap of all that happened in 2022.

We've made a big rule change which allows for the sale of animals which are born but not yet established. Preestablished animals are those which have not yet established a regular feeding pattern.

We added this use case because it does occur in the hobby and can be performed responsibly. This can be particularly useful for animals which are in high demand which are in many cases selling before they ever hit our market. That said, both buyer and seller should exercise this option with care. We recommend that these animals be established by the breeder prior to delivery. In most cases we believe this is how this feature will be used. This update simply allows the sale to happen earlier.

To utilize this feature, eligible sellers can simply list an animal for sale and set its maturity to "preestablished". These listings will show up just like other listings. When buyers inquire, they will see a disclaimer to make sure they understand the additional complications that may occur, such as a delay in delivery.

In order to carefully regulate this feature, we have only made it available to certain sellers. Current requirements include a selling account which is at least six months old and Basic membership or higher. These terms are subject to change as we seek to find the best balance between freedom and responsibility.

Sellers wishing to use this feature should make sure to read the Default Store Policy and override terms as desired. By default, the maximum time for an animal to be successfully established after payment has been made is 60 days unless otherwise specified before purchase. If the seller cannot establish the animal in this time window, they must be willing and able to provide a 100% refund of all money paid, upon Buyer’s request. Like most of our default policies, this can be customized by the seller in their own policy or documented in writing with the buyer prior to the sale.

The newer version of our search (soon to be default) makes it easier to find these animals by making the maturity filter a multi-select. This means you can filter on multiple maturity settings at the same time, such as preestablished or baby.

All sellers can still prepare ads for upcoming animals. We recommend creating those ads with the inactive setting. After the animal is ready to sell, these ads can be easily activated.

Learn more about this feature:

• Preestablished Animals Support Article
• Rules for Selling
• Default Store Policy

The beautify of these animals is one of the best parts of our hobby. MorphMarket breeders have uploaded more than a million photos of these spectacular specimens over the past few years.

We've just made a big improvement that will help you showcase your animals predictably. We are now using the same aspect ratio (or width-to-height ratio) for photos of animals across the site.

Great photography requires great composition. Fundamentally, that's where you place the animal within the photo. You don't normally want to show buyers a photo with part of the animal missing from the image, unless you're providing multiple photos. In order to make your photos look great on our site, you want to understand how MorphMarket prepares and displays those images.

For consistency and versatility we have chosen to CONTINUE using the same aspect ratio which has been in use on our site since the beginning in the search results thumbnails. This ratio is roughly 6:5 (specifically 45:38). However, various other parts of the site were not respecting that rule.

You don't need to crop your photos to this size because our site will continue to do that for you. But you should be aware that this is a narrower photo than what your phone will take by default (which is typically 4:3).

Here are different places you'll see animal photos:

• When you upload your photos in the Edit Animal page, it'll show you exactly how it's going to look.
• This is the way it'll appear in search results as well as on the new animal ad pages.
• Note that users can still tap to zoom and see the full uncut photos on the animal pages.
• This aspect ratio is also being used on all the other parts of the site including Offspring, Collection, and Morphpedia images.
• This work was one of the important things for us to address before retiring the old search and old ad pages. Almost there!

We recommend animal photos which are at least 1500px wide, but more than 10mb in size.

Store logos are a different matter. We recommend a square format, but it will still show the original format of your logo on your store page.

Let us know if you have any questions!