Question: colour of offspring?

[elessars_patriot]

A random question but it has been annoying me. If i had an axolotl of one colour and another axolotl of a different colour, is it possible to get babies from the same batch where some are the colour of the male and the others of the female?

e.g golden + wildtype= some wildtype and some golden babies

[Kaysie]

Depending on what genes the parents carry, you can get a variety of colored offspring.

For example, if you mated a golden and a wildtype, if the wildtype was recessive for albino, and the golden was recessive for leucistic, you could get wildtype, white albino, and golden albino.

[Phil]

Hi there, I had some eggs off ColinB from the forum - I understand the parents were a gold and a wild type.

I got both Gold and Wild Type hatchlings :-)

Cheers, Phil

[Julia]

And just to be a little difficult my golden female and wild male produced wildtype, melanoid , gold albino and leucistic ( white) ...though the last two colours where smaller in size and number.

[elessars_patriot]

Well thanks guys, i thought that they would have mixed babies but i wasnt sure if the wildtype would have been dominant, i know that my two axies must have at least one parent the same because i got them from the same breeder (which is bad because i didn't really want to inbreed).

[Kaysie]

Inbreeding isn't usually an issue with axolotls.

[Will]

I'm confused. I thought when you mix two different recessive traits, you get a normal looking animal that is heterozygous for those traits.

[Kaysie]

If both parents carry the recessive trait, up to 25% of the offspring will inherit a recessive copy from both parents, and will display the recessive trait. 50% of the offspring will inherit one copy of the recessive from one parent, and one copy of the dominant from the other parent. They will be heterozygous for this trait (carrying the recessive, but displaying the dominant). The remaining 25% of the offspring will be homozygous for dominant, and will not carry the recessive.

In this case, the two parents would be a golden albino (which is a/a, D/?), and a wildtype (which is A/?, D/?). If the golden albino is a/a, D/d, and the wildtype is A/a, D/d, you will get 25% of the offspring as a/a (albino), 50% as A/a (not albino, recessive for albino), and 25% as A/A (not albino, not recessive for albino). Of the albino offspring, 25% will be d/d (white albino), while the remaining 75% will be golden (D/d or D/D).

THEN you would have leucistics thrown into the mix. Of the non-albinos, 25% would be leucistic (d/d), while the remaining 75% would be wildtype (D/d or D/D).

But it's hard to make blanket statements about what the offspring will look like unless you know what genes the parents have.