Crested Gecko Morphs — Demystified

So you’ve got a crested gecko, and you’re trying to figure out what the heck its morph is. Welcome to the expansive world of crested gecko morphs. The most important thing to know about crested geckos is that there is no scientific way to genetically determine their morphs. This means you could breed one gecko with another gecko and get an animal that looks nothing like either parents, which is a truly fun and exciting aspect to breeding these beautiful creatures.

You see, with many other reptiles like leopard geckos, ball pythons, and bearded dragons, the genetics for morphs are understood fairly well. If you combine X with Y, you’ll get Z. However, none of those genetics have been documented in crested geckos, with the exception of a possible axanthic morph currently being proven out, so we are left to speculate morph names from visual colors and patterns. Because of this, breeding them is often times an unpredictable, albeit exciting, endeavor. For this reason, you may see me refer to the word “morph” with quotation marks around it, because these color and pattern difference are not true genetic morphs such as true morphs like “albino” or “scaleless”. We can see crested gecko traits with our eyes but we can’t see them in the geckos’ genes yet.

There are a few tried and true visual “morphs” that hobbyists agree on as being pretty cut-and-dry when it comes to identification. Here is a list of some of the most popular crested gecko morphs, starting with the simpler (and often cheaper) types and working upwards from there.

Patternless

A patternless crested gecko can come in any size, shape, or color, but the main factor here is that it does not having any spots, cream pattern, or highlights.

Clean as a whistle! No pattern to be seen at all.

Bi-Color

These geckos are similar to patternless in that they can be any color, but they have a dual tone coloring to them. A red bi-color gecko will be totally red, but have a different shade of red down its “dorsal area”, or the top of the gecko from nose to tail base.

While this beautiful bi-color girl does have some dalmatian spots, she does not have enough to necessarily get the label of “dalmatian”. However, you can see a clear two-tone coloring scheme on her, which you can see by comparing her dorsal area (her back) to the rest of her body.

Dalmatian

Dalmatians are a popular morph, and they can be all over a spectrum of spottiness. Just like the dog, dalmatians have spots. Some have a few spots, some have so many you can hardly see the gecko underneath. These spots can range in colors from black, white, red, grey, olive, and anything in between. Basic dalmatians with just a few spots are pretty easy to come by, but collectors will pay upwards of $1,000 or more for a gecko totally covered in big black “ink blot” spots.

A truly perfect example of an “inkblot” dalmatian crested gecko. Photo credit goes to Scaredy Cat Geckos.

Tiger/Brindle

Also like in dogs, brindle geckos have a stripe-y pattern on them. They can be any color. Geckos with an extreme brindle pattern are often referred to as tigers instead, because of their full-body stripes.

This is a firey little orange brindle/tiger, with stripes strong enough that you could probably just refer to this pattern as tiger.

Flame

These cresteds are generally pretty common but can be very beautiful. They will often have a darker base with cream color on their back and light creamy coloring coming up their sides, almost like little flames. The base of these geckos can be any color.

This alert-looking gecko has light, creamy flashes of color on its lateral (side) area, but because the pattern is pretty faint it is a flame, not a harlequin.

Harlequin, or Harley

The more concentrated version of flame coloring is called Harlequin. These geckos have prominent amounts of cream coming up their sides, as well as decent amounts of cream pattern on their back, and are one of the more sought-after morphs in the low-to-mid price range.

This little geck has cream on both his dorsum and his sides.

Extreme Harley

These are often times “big money” geckos, most likely because of how striking they are to behold. These geckos look like they have an abstract oil painting on their hides, as they are heavily covered in cream patterning. Some of the most beloved extreme harlequins have a dark, almost-black or red base with bright white cream splotches from head to tailbase. The general rule of thumb to determine if your harley is extreme is to see if any of the pattern from the bottom of the gecko reaches the top, or dorsal, areas. You’ll also sometimes see “drips” of cream, or pattern that is dripping down from the top of the gecko, as seen in the photo below. Some extremes will have so much pattern that it can be a struggle to see their darker base color, even when fired up.

A perfect example of a young extreme, you can see that the side pattern on this gecko goes all the way up to the dorsum, and the cream from the top even drips down.

Lavender

The lavender gecko is an odd beast, with this morph just coming into popularity in the last few years. Lavender geckos are reported to be a gecko that does not “fire up”, or change their base color, like most cresteds do. They may change a tiny bit, but they stay a light grey or even purple-y color even when they fire. This pale grey shade is referred to as “lavender”. Some folks maintain that these geckos are not a valid color morph, but simply a crested gecko that has never been seen fired up with a darker color, which leads to lavender morphs being a topic of contention in some hobbyist circles.

As you can see, the base color is a light grey and almost purple-y.

Phantom Pinstripe

Phantom pinners are a less-common version of the classic pinstripe, where there is a darker stripe of color running down the gecko underneath and around the actual pinstripe scales. This “phantom” pinning is not raised up like normal pinstripes. The effect of phantom pinning can give a really beautiful contrast to a gecko, and most phantom pinners will be lighter geckos with dark pinning.

This gecko is one of the most perfect examples of a text-book phantom pinner. The dark lines underneath the regular pinstripes, starting from just behind the eyes, running down the body, are classic phantom pinning.

Pinstripe

The pinstripe is like the muscle car of the crested gecko world; an instant classic that most everyone loves to see in all shapes and forms. Pinstripes, or “pinners”, have two rows of raised scales, often times cream in color, running down their back. There are all sorts of forms of this morph in the pinner spectrum, with some geckos having full, long rows of beautiful white scales running from their crests to their tailbase, and others having a few little spots of raised scales but not much else. Having a small, separated amount of pinstriping down the dorsum is often referred to as “dash pinning”.

Here you can see a good exmaple of an “almost full” pinstripe. The spikey highlighted pin scales run down nearly the entire gecko. You can see that they start breaking up towards the tail.

Quadstripe

The quadstripe is the “high-octane” version of a pin stripe. Essentially, quadstripes will have pinning down their lateral (side) areas, as well as down their back. The really cool thing about quads is how the lateral pinning causes scales to be raised up on the sides, which is not something you see often in other morph types.

This gecko might be defined as a “lavender quadstripe” because he stays a nice dusty grey color. You can see that he has nearly full pinning down his back, as well as stripes of pinning down both his sides.

Whew! So now that you’ve got all that, maybe you can pinpoint what type of gecko you’ve got on your hands. If you’re still having trouble, send us a clear, well-lit photo and we’ll do our best to give you an accurate “morph” description.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you’ve been able to figure out what the heck your geck is. Make sure to follow us at TheReptileBlog.Com for more reptile-related content!