Pornographic pictures

[Velaria]

Haha, now that I have your attention, I would like to ask if you guys will please look at the photos below and tell me what sex my axolotls are. Yes, I have seen the pics on axolotl.org, and I'm still stumped.

Dave from Ed's was kind enough to look at some other pics of these axies for me a couple of months ago, and he thought that they were both female. However, the pics that I sent him were not as good as the ones below, and the white one's cloaca looks SO MUCH bigger than the black one's. In fact, the white one's cloaca looked even bigger last night, before I took these pics, and it even seemed like it was gaping open (eeew!).

The white one is over two years old, and the black one is approximately seven months old, so the black one may not have reached its full sexual maturity yet, which may explain its smaller cloaca.

Anyway, I've done my research on this issue and I'm still not sure what to think, so if you guys would help me figure it out, I'd really appreciate it.

Without further ado, here are the promised pornographic photos:

A comparison between photos A and D probably best illustrates the discrepancy between the sizes of the two animals' cloacas.

Thanks in advance for viewing these tasteless photos

 

[Darkmaverick]

Hi velaria,

A panel of experts in the caudata chat room have gone through your pictures and we shall give our verdicts.

Madeve, Darkmaverick and Greatwtehunter felt that both of them are males. However, the second one being younger at 7 months, could be a bit hard to tell.

Jennewt, Havelock, Kaysie and Troutfly felt that the second one is a female. Female cloacas can look stretched out sometimes when laying eggs.

Thus the conclusion is at least one of your axies are male. You would definitely know for sure when you see eggs or spermatophores.

By the way, i love your title, very attention grabbing.

Cheers

 

[Velaria]

Thank you very much! So the white one is definitely male? That's what I suspected!

I have never seen eggs or spermatophores in the tank. They're together in the same tank, but they're separated with a tank separator. Being separated like this, will they still lay eggs and/or spermatophores?

I've seen photos of eggs in a tank, but I have no idea what spermatophores look like. Are there any photos on the forums?

I really appreciate everyone's input! Thanks again!

 

[Greatwtehunter]

There is a picture of a spermatophore here under the courtship and spawning title.

 

[Darkmaverick]

Hi Velaria,

They can still possibly lay eggs or spermatophores.

Here are some pictures

http://www.axolotl.org/breeding.htm

Cheers

 

[Velaria]

Ok, so assuming that the black one is female, then the reason for her cloaca to be stretched out like that would be because she's ready to lay eggs, right?

So if I don't notice any eggs in the tank over the next week or two, then would it be safe to assume that it's actually a male whose cloaca is not yet fully developed?

However, in photo D, it's clearly obvious that the black axolotl's toe tips are white, which would indicate sexual maturity. If it IS sexually mature, then it would be safe to assume that it's female, right?

Or maybe it's a hermaphrodite (heheh)?

And one more question... if these two animals were to mate, what do you think I could expect the offspring to look like? The white one is albino, and his eyes are reflective so he does have iridophores, and he has the slightest hint of subtle yellow spots on his head and back, but they're almost unnoticeable. I know more about genetics than the average person does, but these diploid genes have me a bit confused.

The black axolotl is, of course, melanoid. Its mother, I was told, was albino. Of course, it has no iridophores, and its body has a uniform black color without any mottling.

Thank you!

 

[Darkmaverick]

HI Velaria,

Firstly it is very super highly unlikely that your melanoid is a hermaphrodite (in case you were worried). It is just axolotls can be difficult to sex because assessment can be subjective and some axies just have an androgenous looking cloaca. Just the divide between the chatroom 'judges' indicate that it is not as clear cut as it seems. Even our resident expert kaysie felt that the axie's cloaca looked somewhat in between and hard to define. Sexing them based on body and head shape is really more an art than science. With so many obese male axies, it can be hard to distinguish. Perhaps i am just terrible at sexing axies but i had errors sexing my own axies and only realised it much later when she had spermatophores and he had eggs.

You have correctly identified that your melanoid axie is matured, as evident by her white toe tips. At 7 months old, she is physiologically capable of laying eggs (if she is indeed a she). However, at that age she is still a young adult axie and not at an optimal condition to breed yet. She has also not reached her full growth conformation potential. Many males too have what seems like 'less endowed' cloacas until much later in adult hood where the prominence is much more obvious. Female axies can have a pudgey stretched out looking cloaca when ready to lay eggs. That is correct.

As much as i know of your eagerness to sex your axies, i think it is not a good idea to make assumptions yet, just so that you don't disappoint yourself. Axies are famous for being easy breeders (erhem) and of course presence of eggs and spermatophores would make things so much more elucidated. Hwever, breeding itself is multifactorial. Do you have two males or two females? Are they in breeding stage of life yet? Are they well fed, free of illness? Is there a stimulus for breeding like a drop in temperature? Therefore, presence of eggs or spermatophores can give you an answer but the absence of spermatophores or eggs cannot definitively give you an answer.

Genetics hmm, frankly i hated genetics (and biometry) as a module back in uni. But lets give it a shot. Lets first think of the genotypes and then perform simple mendelian genetics distribution. Take a look at this link as well:

http://www.axolotl.org/genetics.htm

Melanoids are homozygous for "m" only (i.e. m/m), but they may be heterozygous for other colour mutations. Based on your description of your albino (presence of yellow spots), i would say there are two possible genotypes. As your albino appears to be a male animal, it is possible that it is a melanoid albino. This type of albino is homozygous for "m" and "a" (m/m a/a). The other type is the axanthic albino. It has normal pigment cell migration but is homozygous for the albino gene and the axanthic gene (a/a and ax/ax). It lacks melanophores, xanthophores and iridophores. It is almost white, but becomes yellow with age due to the accumulation of riboflavins from its diet.

m/m a(ax)/a(ax) vs m/m a/a or a/a ax/ax

Instead of drawing out the crosses like what we would do in school, i shall just discuss some of the possible progeny combinations.

You can get melanoids (black) or melanoid albinos , you can get axanthic albinos, you can also get normal white albinos. What you can't get are wildtypes and leucistics. Wildtype phenotype requires a dominant "D" gene that albinos and melanoids do not carry. Leucistics are d/d (recessive for the wildtype colour hence appearing as white) but they are non melanoid, non axanthic and non albino. Your crosses will thus not yield a d/d combination.

Any geneticists here please help verify if im right! (Don't kill me please velaria if i get it wrong, not that confident on this one!)

Cheers

 

[blueberlin]

But... the melanoid is male...?

 

[Darkmaverick]

Haha Eva,

Welcome to our team. Now our team balances out the other team! 4 vs 4.

I thought the melanoid was male too, but the other team consisting of jen, kaysie, jacq and brad felt that the melanoid is female.

 

[blueberlin]

Ok maybe I am confused because I can't tell if the albino is melanoid (don't see iridophores in the pictures...). I mean that the porn shots D-G are male. I tend towards male on A-C, too, actually.

-Eva

 

[kira]

Ok, here is my $0.02! I think that they both could be male.

However, I think that the melanoid IS male. But knowing me, I am probably wrong!! LOL

 

[Darkmaverick]

Yay Kira joins our team, now there are 5 versus 4!

 

[Velaria]

Hello, and thank you!

The albino does have iridophores:

Axolotl.org states, "In the same way that a/a results in a lack of eumelanin, m/m (melanoid) results in a lack of iridophores. Such animals are very dark, with no reflective pigment cells at all. M/m or M/M would result in normal iridophore development."

So I guess he can't be m/m a/a OR a/a ax/ax, right? Having iridophores, he would NOT be melanoid OR axanthic. Would he possibly be Mm/a/a? Or would the M automatically give him some coloration?

So Ray (thank you so much for your help, by the way), correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that a melanoid axolotl cannot have any iridophores, right? If that's true, then a leucistic axolotl would always have iridophores, since you say that leucistics are non melanoid. Here is an example of one of my "normal" leucistic babies. You can see that it its eyes are reflective and that it does have iridophores:

You can see that it has some slight coloration on its head and back, and this coloration has some greenish hints to it.


HOWEVER, I have one leucistic baby that looks different from the rest. With my limited knowledge, I have been calling this baby (pictured below) a melanoid leucistic. It has no iridophores whatsoever, and its spots are totally devoid of any hints of color. They are greyish-black. Would this baby be some kind of strange anomaly? Its eyes may look a bit reflective in the pic, but trust me, they're not at all. Here's the pic:

???

Hahaha, I just started thinking to myself, what would my axies say if they knew that I had been showing pictures of their genitalia all over the internet? LMAO!

 

[blueberlin]

Hi Velaria,

I never can seem to understand the genetics or even the meanings of the different color types (really just laziness on my part, I know, and I need to work on that, but there it is). One thing, though, is this: the pigments develop at different times. The dark ones and the yellow ones develop before hatching, but the iridophores much come later, a few months after hatching.

You can have a melanoid albino as well (I mean, or) a leucistic albino. The melanoid does not have a shiny ring in its eyes; the leucistic does.

I think maybe what you are calling iridiphores in the picture (the shiny white spots?) are actually the insides of the little fellow's head.

Now hopefully someone else will write more and we can both learn!

-Eva

 

[Velaria]

Hi Velaria,

I never can seem to understand the genetics or even the meanings of the different color types (really just laziness on my part, I know, and I need to work on that, but there it is). One thing, though, is this: the pigments develop at different times. The dark ones and the yellow ones develop before hatching, but the iridophores much come later, a few months after hatching.

You can have a melanoid albino as well (I mean, or) a leucistic albino. The melanoid does not have a shiny ring in its eyes; the leucistic does.

I think maybe what you are calling iridiphores in the picture (the shiny white spots?) are actually the insides of the little fellow's head.

Now hopefully someone else will write more and we can both learn!

-Eva

A leucistic albino? You probably know more about this than I do, but I don't think there is a such thing as a leucistic albino. I think it has to be one or the other, not both. Albinos have no color at all. Leucistics do have pigment, it just hasn't migrated off the neural crest (right??), therefore making them look white. That's why leucistics have dark eyes... because they DO have pigment.

Leucistics are, simply put, white axolotls with black eyes. So you're saying that a melanoid albino would have dark eyes with no iridophores? The term "melanoid albino" seems to be a contradiction. Either the animal has melanin, OR it is albino, right? How can it be both?

As far as the iridophores, I know what they are. I know that they're not the shiny dots inside the babies' heads. Iridophores are the reflective cells of the animal, and they can be seen in the reflective ring around the animal's eye and sometimes on its gills.

My baby in picture #2 is a white axolotl with black eyes and no iridophores. Is this normal or not?

 

[blueberlin]

Laugh - no, really, I have very very little idea about genetics. The scope of my knowledge, none of it reliable, is that there are three tyes of colors - dark (melanophores), yellow (um... um...), and glittery-sparkly (iridphores). The different names indicate the presence of genes that either produce a pigment or supress its production. E.g., a melanoid does not produce iridophores.

As to the rest, maybe you are right. Maybe I am thinking of, say, a melanoid leucistic and not a melanoid albino. I think leucistics do not produce the dark pigment, so that they are white or yellow.. No wait, there are lots of leucistics with black freckles... Ummm... See how it goes with me? Maybe I'd better just hush now.

Does the genetics page help at all? Since I am left to struggle and write nonsense here and nobody else is coming to rescue you (or me).

I really just wanted to note that iridophores do not develop until about 3-4 months after the axolotl has hatched, so you wouldn't be seeing any in a larvae.

-Eva

 

[Darkmaverick]

Hello ladies,

Since i opened up pandora's box, i had better close it pronto. To think some people feel that axolotls have been discussed to death, i think theres still a vast ocean out there. Despite a busy day (with articles and gym), I actually literally spent like 2 hours studying the genetics and looking over the discussions carefully. I had better be loved since this post has my blood, sweat and tears (Although i think Eva is already pretty fond of me )

Ok, lets settle some of the more straightforward issues first, which i think could be some misconceptions.

Eye ring

A reflective ring after shining a light source on axie eyes is indeed useful to determine a melanoid from others, especially with dark coloured wildtypes.

However, when you see that the entire eye appears reflective such as from a camera flash, it makes interpretation difficult because you cannot accurately determine if there is indeed a reflective ring.

All axolotls (of all colours) have this glare eye effect because their eyes have an anatomical structure called the tapetum lucidum. The tapetum lucidum optimises light effectively by basically acting as a reflective mirror within the eye. This is useful for dim light conditions and most nocturnal species of animals have them.

Therefore to clarify, only dark melanoids (black) and melanoid albinos will not have the reflective eye rings. All other colours - wildtype, leucistics, gold, axanthic and normal albinos will all have them.

Colour inheritance

Firstly lets acquaint ourselves with the chromatophores or colour pigments.

There are basically three colour pigments. There are the brownish eumelanin based melanophores, the carotenoid and pteridine based yellowish xanthophores and the purine crystal based iridosphores which imparts the shiny iridescence.

What is common with all three of the colour pigment genes are that they are all expressed phenotypically (means the animal has that colour) only by the respective recessive gene pairing (ie - m/m - melanoids, a/a - albinos, ax/ax - axanthic). Therefore genotypes that are heterozygous such as (M/m) or dominant such (M/M) genes will NOT express phenotypically as melanoid.

Also do not get confused by the terminologies. The albino genes (A or a) acts on the melanophores, the axanthic genes (Ax or ax) acts on the xanthophores and the meloid genes (M/m) acts on the iridosphores (not melanophores).

Another thing to understand is that for all axolotls each of the three chromatophores are inherited independantly from one another. That means any axie (including wildtype and leucistics) will have alleles for all of the three pigments. Think of pigments as proteins that different genes will affect whether they are produced or not. As an example a axie could have M/M, A/A, Ax/Ax. These genes are not linked to each other and not mutually exclusive. The crux here is wether the genotype for these three pigments allow the pigment proteins to be produced.

Development inheritance

Now that we sort out the chromatophores, lets talk about the phenomenon of wildtypes and leucistics. As mentioned earlier, wildtypes and leucistics also carry the pigment genes. How then do they appear like they are? This is because another variable that determines the phenotypic expression of an axie's colour is 'embyonic development'. Once pigments are produced, they need to migrate off the neural crest of a developing embryo in order to be expressed phenotypically. A gene that prevents this migration would thus cause the axie to appear unpigmented because the pigments are not allowed to be expressed even though they are present. However, the developmental gene differs in that it varies in terms of effect. It is not a clear cut black or white issue but rather expressed as a grey zone, a gradient or a spectrum of outcomes that can thus result in varying phenotypic expression.

WIldtypes are easy to explain in that they simply express all the three pigments causing their characteristic appearance. Their development gene allows the migration of the pigments. Developmental genes are dominant in allowing pigment expression. (D/D or D/d)

In leucistics, they can still produce pigment simply because they still possess the genes for them. However, these pigment cells upon being produced, cannot migrate off the neural crest of a developing embryo. Therefore, if pigments are not allowed to be expressed, you get a whitish/pinkish looking animal. However, as i mentioned earlier, the development gene is a 'spectrum', therefore you can get varying amounts of pigment such as freckling on a leucistic animal. Also because the eyes (as with all animal species with eyes) are one of the first anatomical sensory organ to develop in an embryo, pigments tend to accumulate, giving the characteristic black eyes. Leucistics thus have the genotype d/d, the recessive genes for development.

One interesting thing i thought i shall also share is that some genes can be switched on and off. Environmental factor play a part, so are things like heath status, nutritional status, age etc. These can be triggers that cause genes to switch off and on. This is one reason why some leucistic animal appears to be increasingly being freckled when they age.

There final conclusion, all axies will always carry 4 sets of genes that will determine its colour. They are the development genes, the melanophore genes, the xanthophore genes and the iridosphore genes.

Hope my explanation have answered some of your queries with regards to genetics. I will post a part 2 post. I think its getting too wordy!

Stay tuned for episode 2 - Investigating Velaria's axies (Larvae and adult) genotypes.

Cheers.

 

[blueberlin]

You learned all of that in two hours?

 

[Darkmaverick]

No eva, i already knew all those. It was charting Velaria's axies genotype possibilities that got me stumped. Well lets see what magic (or disaster) i can try weave in part 2.

Hugs

 

[Jacquie]

Well lets see what magic (or disaster) i can try weave in part 2.

Abracadabra shaboom!

Now let's see - you posted this two hour labour of love one hour ago, so that means part two will be ready in the next hour right?

We're hanging on every word Ray and Pandora's fingers are starting to twitch....