Empty Back Crested Geckos

The Empty Back morph pushes the dorsal pattern colour of a crested gecko out from the centre of the back. This leaves a pinstripe over a mostly plain base colour rather than the fuller markings found on a normal pinstripe. Keepers who want a clean and minimal-looking back breed and buy for it. Breeding two Empty Back parents produces the more heavily cleared Super Empty Back.

Appearance

This morph looks most like a superstripe or an ordinary pinstripe, though the pattern colour on the back is reduced. On a Super Empty Back, nearly all of that colour is gone, leaving only the pinstripe and base colour with some striping low on the sides. You can see that pinstripe scales sit noticeably higher than on a normal pinstripe gecko. It is not always easy to read a single copy because the reduction can be hidden by other strong pattern genes, such as a Lilly White dorsal or a heavy cream dorsal. A het might look close to a normal pinstripe until you compare the two side by side. What colour is left in the pin depends on what other genes the gecko carries. That colour can be white, cream, yellow, or bright tangerine. On a tangerine or yellow-base gecko, that colour is toned down rather than wiped out as it is on other bases.

Genetics

Empty Back works as an incomplete dominant. Because one copy shows on the back, breeding two carriers together creates the homozygous Super Empty Back instead of another grade of het. It has only two names, Empty Back and Super Empty Back, as a single copy is never the invisible carrier that a recessive het is. It is in no allelic complex, and EB Phantom is one of the named combos bred from it. The line was produced by Anthony Caponetto Reptiles and goes back to at least 2008, but it was not recognised as a distinct mutation until Super Empty Backs began appearing around 2017.