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To the Nep guys. What's the difference?

Im looking at a new Nep and im a bit confused. The are twe with the same species but in a different order. One is Ampullaria x (spectabilis x talangensis). The other is Ampullaria x (Talangensis x Spectabilis). Is there a difference in the way the pitcher will turn out?
 
When listing Nepenthes hybrids, the female parent is named first. So in your example. Ampullaria x (spectabilis x talangensis) N. ampullaria is the female parent and N. spectabilis x talangensis is the male parent. So the only difference between the plants youve listed is that the hybrid being used as a male plant has the parents swapped. Instead of spectabilis being the female parent, it is now the male parent in your second example.

The differences can be subtle or not, with seed grown individuals there is always room for unique traits, but I believe female plants will usually get a genetic upper hand (correct me if Im wrong.) So the N. spectabilis x talangensis might have a bit more spectabilis in it than talangensis, and vice versa for the other.
 
It often appears that the female parent in a cross tends to have some small amount of dominance over the male in the traits expressed (though the strength of this also depends on how dominant the species is over others; ampullaria, gracilis, rafflesiana, hamata -at least shape and pattern-wise- all tend to overrun the other parent in a cross, female or not), but all bets can be off once a more complex hybrid or F2 plants are produced due to crossing over and chromosome pairing. Either way, ampullaria is going to dominate both of these hybrids, and the differences produced by the switched parents of the male plants will be comparatively minimal.
 
Most genes are in the nucleus of a cell. For these genes, which parent is male or female is totally irrelevant (you get a 50-50 mix; genes come in pairs and each parent contributes one part of each pair). A very few genes may carry over from the cell cytoplasm of the mother (this is called cytoplasmic inheritance). http://www.clivias.com/articles/article016.htm. The father contributes no cytoplasm. For these genes, which one is the mother is critical. There's also the possibility of Y-Linkage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_linkage. Y linkage is genes contributed from the male parent's Y chromosome. Since only males have Y chromosomes, male offspring only get the genetic material on the Y chromosome from the male parent. But I'm not sure exactly how the genetics of nepenthes sex works so that might be irrelevant.

I doubt there is much genetic study of nepenthes, but if there was that could tell you which traits are inherited from cytoplasm, and then you could see which parent species you prefer for that particular trait, and decide which one you wanted to be the mother.
 
Mitochondrial and plastid genes are maternally inherited, and what's passed down via those genes are pretty well understood (variegation can only be passed down maternally for example, and most physical structure genes are not cytoplastic); Nepenthes do not possess a y-chromosome, so there is no such think as y-linked genes for them. There has not, in fact, been any particular chromosome or gene isolated that we know to determine sex.
 
Mitochondrial and plastid genes are maternally inherited, and what's passed down via those genes are pretty well understood (variegation can only be passed down maternally for example, and most physical structure genes are not cytoplastic); Nepenthes do not possess a y-chromosome, so there is no such think as y-linked genes for them. There has not, in fact, been any particular chromosome or gene isolated that we know to determine sex.
Interesting stuff. I wonder if sex is environmentally determined in nepenthes, like in some geckos and crocodilians.
 
Numbers of male vs. female progeny tends to remain stable and both sexes are found intermixed in nearly all Nepenthes populations, so I strongly doubt it's environmental. And, considering some have been known to switch sex, it's more likely hormonally controlled via a gene cascade system.
 
wow I didn't think what I thought would be such a simple question would turn out to me such an interesting subject.
 
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