Fwd: Re: What does a agassizii really look like

["Ed Pon" <edpon@hotmail.com>]

Ed wrote:
>
>> 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.  

Francis wrote:
>
>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

Francis--I think you probably reasoned this out better than I did.  I'm 
inclined to go with your interpretation.  I wonder if this will be 
mentioned in his coming book.  If anyone is in regular communication 
with David Soares, you might ask David if he knows anything about this.  
David is a good friend of Uwe's and has hosted him when Uwe visits the 
U.S.

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