Re: NANFA-- More Melonistic Hets.

Bruce Stallsmith (fundulus_at_hotmail.com)
Tue, 04 Jan 2000 00:01:04 EST

It sounds like this melanistic trait is a classic Mendelian recessive trait.
Two normally pigmented parents could each carry a normal allele (variant of
a gene) and a recessive allele, so that about a quarter of their offspring
would be melanistic by virtue of having received a melanistic allele from
each parent. If you cross melanistic fish with each other, they should only
have melanistic offspring, because to be melanistic you can only have two
copies of the melanistic allele.

At least this is the classic Mendelian explanation; maybe it's not so
simple, biology usually isn't. (For instance, maybe this pigmentation is
controlled by two or more different genes, with incomplete or co-dominance
among alleles.) So, in a generation or two we might know.

--Bruce Stallsmith
Huntsville, AL

>Well, after a one generation sabbatical, my H. formosa have started
>dropping melonistic babies again.
>
>Now...if I could just get them to breed true!
>
>Rob Erhardt

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