Help Identifying Larvae Type

jmsstoner · Dec 28, 2012

I have some newly hatched larvae that perhaps someone could help me identify. The mother is a leucistic, and the father is a GFP leucistic.

From my understanding, all babies should be leucistic with 25-75% of them carrying the GFP trait depending on whether the father carries 1 or 2 copies of the GFP gene.

Upon hatching, I noticed that roughly 25% of the larvae had no pigment in their eyes, they almost look like gold albinos.

Both parents have always had dark eyes the entire time I've owned them. I got them when they were about 2.5cm long.

Do GFP leucistics eyes darken as they develop, or did I somehow end up with something different?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've attached pictures of the babies and parents.

DeCypher · Dec 28, 2012

Those are albinos. You have normal albinos and leucistics, as well as GFP of those colors. Congrats! They look beautiful, and healthy.

jmsstoner · Dec 28, 2012

Albinos? That's interesting. It was my understanding that since leucism was recessive and both parents carried the trait, all juveniles would be leucistic as well. I wonder how I got albinos.

wandering · Dec 28, 2012

Albino in axolotls is a simple recessive trait. That means both parents must be carriers to produce albino offspring.

The maths.
Imagine you have a coin for each parent. Toss both coins. There are four combinations that occur in roughly equal numbers. Two heads (say) gives non albino. One head (from dad) and one tail (from mum) gives non albino. One head ( from mum) and one tail (from dad) gives non albino. Two tails gives albino. So 1 in four tosses gives albino. That's your 25%.

The actual mechanics of recessive traits usually involve a non functioning gene product of some sort. Thats why carriers don't express the trait - they have one functioning gene that produces enough product, so you can't tell they also have a non functioning gene.

Does that make sense?

I do not know the genetics of gfp.

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jmsstoner · Dec 28, 2012

Thanks Wandering. That makes sense. Both parents must have carried the gene for albinism. Hence, 25% of the babies came out albino. I didn't know that leucism and albinism could both be carried at the same time. Fascinating!

wandering · Dec 28, 2012

The albino gene and the leucistic gene are at different locations on the DNA so they are inherited independently. Leucistic is also a recessive. Both your axies must be homozygous leucistic. Interestingly, leucistic is where the exterior pigment cells do not move across the skin of the embryo during early development so they could be various colours genetically, but appear white. Your albinos would be golden if they were not leucistic as well.

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Help Identifying Larvae Type

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