Tangerine Crested Geckos
The pinkish orange of Tangerine sits over every part of the crested gecko pattern. You should judge the strength of the colour before buying. A hatchling with light pigmentation might fade as it grows, but a strongly pigmented one will keep its colour.
About the Tangerine gene
Tangerine is a pinkish orange pigment that infuses a crested gecko's pattern colour, on top of whatever other traits the animal carries. Keepers buy it for the warmth it brings. Cream and white patterns turn bubblegum, pink, or orange, while a strongly pigmented animal keeps that colour until it reaches adulthood.
Appearance
Tangerine can add shades from orange to deep tangerine to any part or the whole animal. Because it adds to existing traits, it shows on yellow-base, harlequin, phantom and pinstripe animals. White pattern might turn pink or bubblegum, and high-white animals can take a yellow hue from it. The tail, belly and head are not affected. The base colour has a creamy orange cast when fired down, but it is bolder and brighter when fired up.
Judge by intensity. A hatchling with light pigment might look well coloured but then fade as it matures, whereas animals with strong pigment hold their colour until adulthood. The colour in hyper tangerines is strong enough to overcome phantom, which normally suppresses colour, and tangerine is one of the traits behind brightly coloured adult phantoms. Orange looks similar, but is usually a little brighter.
Genetics
The status of Tangerine inheritance is a matter of dispute. One view sees it as incomplete dominant, a term often called co-dom by the hobby, because a visible difference exists between an animal with one parent carrying it and one with both parents carrying it. Anthony Caponetto, who named the trait, treats it as line bred instead. This means it is built up over generations of pairing tangerine animals instead of being passed on as a single gene. Tang is the common shorthand, while plain Tangerine and Super Tangerine are the other listings, with the strongest animals selling as hyper tangerine. It is in no known allelic complex. It is found in the Bubblegum line of Anthony Caponetto and in combinations named Tangerine Phantom. The trait traces to Repashy stock. Anthony Caponetto recognised it around 2005, starting from a female named Pink.