Photo: Neat eye differences in babies!

[Vyaavi]

I got some great leucistic x leucistic GFP eggs from joeyasaurusrex (thank you!!) and I'm having a blast raising babies again - I've raised all of my axies from eggs, but "all" is a grand total of four! And all of those were albino or golden from the same type parents. So I've never seen a leucistic or wildtype baby, or even a baby from a pigmented egg! I know it's waaaaay too early to tell their type (they hatched one week ago), but I noticed that two of them have different eyes than the others. Have any of your seen this before, and if so, did it indicate anything about their phenotype or genotype?

9 out of the 11 babies have "normal" eyes, which have a slight sheen to the iris area. Two of them have just pure black eyes. These two also lack the faint green color of the others - other than the spots, they're white. I know this isn't linked to the GFP because I already checked and 5 of the 11 are GFP, 6 non-GFP. Pretty neat stuff! I'm having a blast just watching them grow, but I wanted to see what you folks with waaay more experience think.

 

[usafaux2004]

You can tell GFP after 1 week? Mine were around a week and I couldn't see any glow, but figure some must have it as both parents are GFP.

 

[Vyaavi]

Well, I can at least confirm that 5 were green under a mild blacklight and 6 weren't! They may develop more GFP later, I'm not quite sure how that works. This proportion matches perfectly with what I'd expect from the parents, since one was GFP and one not. I'll see if I can get a pic to show you the glow.

 

[Vyaavi]

I had to do a lot of photo editing on this one - both to make anything show up at all, and then to get the color balance right because my silly monitor was using super warm light to ease eye strain. Oops!

Anyhow, this is pretty much the strength of the green color. The middle one is non-GFP and the other two are GFP, as near as I can tell.

 

[Vyaavi]

Eesh, I absolutely hate to triple-post, but I found the answer to my own question! Many thanks to Margie for these pictures. The ones with black eyes are white melanoids or melanoid leucistic, and the others are regular leucistic. So cool!

So that means I can confirm that those two are A-mmdd, and the others are A-M-dd. For there to be this proportion of mm, I believe both parents were heterozygous Mm. Since none are albino, proooooobably the parents were both AA. I'm so excited to see how they grow out!

 

[usafaux2004]

Day 11-7 on my babies, and I think I'm seeing very faint glow in some. Maybe 1/3 or so, seems like most of the albinos, and a lot less of the wilds.

 

[Vyaavi]

GFP will be less obvious in darker axies. Their pigments obscure the green glow. There can also be varying levels of GFP expression, so yours might just have less of the protein. I'm pretty new to the GFP stuff so I can't say for sure!