Yellow Base Crested Geckos

Crested geckos have three primary base colours, which are Yellow Base, Black Base and Red Base. Yellow Base results in a bright animal with little dark pigment. You should check this base first when buying a gecko that looks pale and clean. This is because heavy pattern and age can both hide it.

Appearance

The shades range from a cream pastel that is soft to a vivid golden yellow. You will find white or cream patterning on yellows, while orange patterning is rare and fades to cream as the gecko ages. To check against a high-coverage harlequin, look at the front of the animal. A yellow base is white or yellow on the chin and near the front legs, but a harlequin is dark or lacks colour in those spots. The yellow can be broken up by heavy tigering. Yellow is the only base that acts as a second base colour: black or red base shows through at the knees, the toes and the tiger breaks. Adding hypo to a yellow still gives animals that are cleaner and lighter.

Some yellows fade as they age to a rust or almost lavender tone. That fade has misled breeders into believing a lavender or a red produced yellows, when the parent was an old yellow that had faded.

Genetics

To produce a yellow, you must have a yellow because Yellow Base is dominant. It is not allelic with Red Base or Black Base. Even though its low dark pigment makes a yellow look naturally hypo, it is a separate trait from Hypo. Listings carry Yellow Base and Super Yellow Base; ask the seller what the super label rests on before paying more for it. Citrus is AC Reptiles' name for its bright yellow and yellow-orange line, which Anthony Caponetto crossed to C2. Some of those animals are so clean of dark pigment that they look hypomelanistic, which he called the "C2 glow". Early keepers loosely called wild-type animals buckskin, and selective breeding separated the yellow out of them.