Re: What does a agassizii really look like

["Francis Brian O'Carroll"]

> When Uwe Romer spoke at the San Francisco Aquarium Society meeting one 
> to two years ago, he mentioned that all the color morphs of aggies are 
> in the genes of all aggies (my translation of what I though I heard).  
> In other words, if you get any pair of aggies and bred them through 
> enough generations, you should be able to isolate all the color morphs 
> by using various selection methods.  

It would be good if someone knew where Romer has this written down.
If he's mentioning it in talks he quite likely has published it.

If aggie color is determined genetically, then it seems more likely to
me that he meant all the color genes of aggies are in *every
population* (not every individual) of aggies. That is, say, the
population of Peruvian (mainly) blue aggies I caught near Iquitos
contains individuals with genes for other colors too, even though most
of the individuals are blue. And another population elsewhere, although
most individuals are red, would contain some individuals with genes for
blue. 

I mean, suppose there is only one gene for color, and it can have
7 different values Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.
Each aggie has 2 copies of the gene (one from each parent). Obvisouly
is your aggy has a red and violet gene, and its mate only has say, yellow
and green, none of their descendants can ever have the Blue, Indigo or Violet
values for that gene.

Purely speculating now, if the original interpretation is correct, and
aiven his experiments with temperature and spawn sex ratios, though, perhaps
he has discovered some environmental factors control color more than genetics?

Frank O'Carroll
List Maintainer
Tokyo