Alrighty, I have a few questions when it comes to eggs. I’ve noticed these forums are a bit dead at the moment so hopefully someone replies!
Okay, so I was just wondering... can a female wild axolotl lay eggs containing a golden/leucistic/albino baby? All i’ve seen is wilds, coppers or melanoids and I was just wondering if it was possible for them to lay a lighter egg if they breed with a light father.
I'm by no means an expert, but I've been looking into axolotl genetics myself recently. The simple answer (with many caveats) is yes, it is possible, but only if the wild type is het for those morphs. To know whether or not she is, you'd either have to know her parentage or breed her with a suitable match to find out. The genes that create wildtypes are dominant, so they always show if present, but the genes for albinos are recessive, meaning that they can be carried by a parent and only show up in offspring with another recessive-carrying parent. If, for example, your wildtype was A/a (capital letter refers to the dominant, non-albino gene affecting the albinism trait and lower case refers to the recessive gene that causes albanism) and not A/A (meaning that it did not inherit any albino genes from its parents), you could end up with some albino babies if the father was either A/a or a/a.
Note, not ALL the babies would be albino; at least some of them would be non-albino because the mother's A would pass down. The babies inherit one from both sides, so half of the mother's babies would inherit her A gene and the other half would inherit the a. Same for the father. If the father is A/a, you would get less albinos (babies who get the a from both sides), probably only about 25%, and if he's a/a (only able to pass down the recessive gene), you would have more, closer to around 50% of the clutch.
The gene that causes leucism is often referred to by the letter "d," with D being the dominant, non-leucistic trait. A wild type is either D/D or D/d. Once more, if it carries the recessive "d," and is bred with a father who also carries or displays it, you would get at least some leucistic babies. The same math applies as above.
If you've bred her in the past with albino or leucistic fathers and failed to produce any babies of these morphs, it is probably safe to say that she would be homozygous for both A/A and D/D.
