Panther Chameleon Locale Test

Funding Tiers:

Tier 1 ($150)
1x free test during R&D phase

Tier 2 ($300)
2x free tests during R&D phase

Tier 3 ($500)
Listed as a platinum sponsor on ipardalis.com
3x free tests

We're raising money to fund the R&D of a commercial test for Panther Chameleon locale.

Panther Chameleons (Furcifer pardalis) display an amazing variety of colors within distinct locales. The Panther Chameleon hobby has never had a reliable way to test animals for locale purity and relies on guessing locale based off of male phenotypes or what their source says. Females do not display their phenotype and have always been "proven out" by breeding with a male from a known locale and observing their offspring to determine if she is from a given locale. There is significant overlap among phenotypes in adjacent locales, and it requires expert knowledge to determine an animal's locale. This has resulted in a lot of locale crosses in captive breeding projects. Some locale crosses have had sterility issues and many hobbyists would prefer to work with pure locale animals. Other hobbyists would just like to know the locale breakdown in a given animal that they would like to breed.

 

This test will use data collected in 2011 from 324 specimens in Madagascar and geo-coded by Grbic et al. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.13241). We expect the test's requirement to be a piece of shed skin the size of a quarter or larger, and the final price to start at around $75 per test. That price will come down if the volume of tests is high enough.

 

This test could fundamentally change our hobby and give us a locale standard for the first time!