Colour Genetics,Help!!

If anyone can shed some light on this I'd be very grateful, its quite a puzzle!

Last year I bought some eggs laid by a leucistic female and a wildtype male.(I'm assuming the wildtype must have been Dd to produce some leucistic offspring when bred with a leucistic (dd)? or have I got it completely wrong?

The 30 eggs hatched into a mix of leucistics and wildtypes, with one melanoid just to confuse things!
My question is, is there any way of maximising my chances of producing more melanoids if I breed axolotls from this generation? or was the melanoid just a flukey mutation? I only kept a wildtype and two leucistics from these 30 eggs, would breeding the two leucistics or a wildtype and a leucistic increase my chances of producing more melanoids?

I'm guessing the genotype of my axolotls are either wildtype: DD or Dd and leucistics: dd, but I dont know how this relates to the recessive melanoid gene, e.g does the dominant wildtype allele D mask the recessive melanoid allelle m?

Sorry if this is just horribly confusing, I've been blundering about the axolotl genetics page and its got me interested, but I only have a very(very!) basic grasp of genetics.

If you only got one melanoid, it might have been just a fluke, a chance mutation.

Your best bet of teasing out those pesky recessive genes is to breed the offspring back to the parents.

The melanoid allele is unrelated to the Leucistic, and both are inherited independently of each other. Neither 'blocks' the other.

Thanks kaysie, you've really helped to clarify things for me, I suspect it was just a lucky fluke, I suppose thats how all these colours arise on the first place. That a shame, I suppose only time will tell if I can hatch more melanoids. Its wishful thinking, but could other "masked" colours possibly appear from a wildtype/ leucistic cross eg golden/ albino? I like the idea that I have no idea what kind of offspring I might get

Have you read the genetics page of the Axolotl Site?

One melanoid out of only 30 eggs does not sound that flukey. If you imagine how many eggs an axolotl lays and then say you just happen to be given mostly wildtype and leucistic eggs. The final tally of Melanoid out of the entire batch could well have added up to around 25%.



Regards Neil

Neil, thanks for pointing that out. You're absolutely right. I missed the part where there were only 30 hatched. I must've read it as they only kept 30 of those that hatched. I blame the small screen on my iPod.

11,000 posts Kaysie!!! Truely impressive, keep up the great work



Regards Neil

Neil C said:

One melanoid out of only 30 eggs does not sound that flukey. If you imagine how many eggs an axolotl lays and then say you just happen to be given mostly wildtype and leucistic eggs. The final tally of Melanoid out of the entire batch could well have added up to around 25%.



Regards Neil

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Great then there's still hope! Nice to know I might be getting more than wildtypes/ leucistics from any eggs i hatch out.I'll just have to be patient and see if it pays off... Yes I've read the genetics page, just needed a little help getting my head around it Congratulations Kaysie, that's a huge number of posts, and all very worthwhile I'm sure!

You seem to have a pretty good grasp on it, better than most people!