Don's Gene Pool
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ONE GOOD THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

Now that we have tripped over one strain of albino guppies that exhibits the trait of "enhanced" tiger tail markings perhaps we can set about creating additional albino strains that will express this trait in other colors, hopefully in silver. I say "hopefully" because I have learned that I cannot "make" Mother AZ do something that she does not want to do with the strains I choose to out-cross. The best I can do is select two strains to out-cross and see what Mother AZ will do with that specific set of gene pool probabilities. As we have seen in previous pools each out-cross can lead to multiple phenotypes being presented to us by Mother AZ for our breeding pleasure (sounds kinky doesn't it?).

So far I have only used strains that have been created in the pools to illustrate this "show and tell". I have "cherry picked" from many trial F2 pairs in order to uncover F2 generations that enabled me to illustrate the pool's topic in as clear-cut a manner as possible. For this pool I have decided to reach into my stock of strains on file and select a strain to out-cross with our "albino tux tiger topaz with mahogany". I have selected a strain labeled "albino tux tiger Christmas red". The two strains being out-crossed are represented by these two guys.


You can see that the tiger markings in the red strain are not enhanced. I am hopeful that Mother AZ will produce one or more red tiger males in a F2 - F4 generation that boasts improved tiger markings in black. Howsoever, what I want to occur and what Mother AZ wishes to produce is seldom the same. The F1 generation produced by mating a male from the red strain and a female from the topaz strain is shown below.


The enhanced tiger markings are evident in the two males produced in the F1 generation. (This tail pattern exhibits a variation of the tiger tail pattern I have yet to apply a name to. Perhaps "dappled" or "plywood" or "bubbles". The typical tiger stripe is very much in evidence along with the addition of a high degree of variegation. I know! Appaloosa Tiger! Will this ever end?) A random pair from this batch is selected to produce the F2 generation.

Here are the males in this F2 generation.


Although you can't really see the tiger stripes in this pic (you try getting more than one guppy to hold still in a tank for a family pic!), the enhanced tiger stripe is evident in each of these males. I chose one of the pink males to produce the F3 generation when paired with one of his sisters. (No special reason, I just liked the pink color.)

Here are the males in the F3 generation.


Bingo, a silver male with darker stripes is produced in this batch. (I can almost hear Mother AZ chuckling and saying, "Hey, are you looking for this?") Let's mate this guy with one of his sisters and see if Mother AZ will let us isolate and stabilize his phenotype.

Here are the males produced in the F4 generation.


Well, AZ has narrowed it down to three phenotypes in this generation. We could select any one of these three to try and stabilize, but we want to continue chasing the silver tiger with darker stripes. We select the silver male and mate him with one of his sisters to produce a F5 generation.

Here are the males in the F5 generation.
Only two phenotypes now show up. Is this silver heterozygous for the pale yellow? I select one of the silver males and mate him with one of his sisters to produce the F6 generation.

Here are the males in the F6 generation.


Yesssssssss! Thank you Mother AZ! A random pair from this generation is selected to produce the F7 generation.

Here are the males in the F7 generation.


Poof, tis done. One strain of "albino tux tiger silver with black" has been produced, stabilized and filed for future out-crosses.

Here's what one of the F7 males matured to 270 days old look like up close and personal.


I have produce similar strains that have even darker stripes. How I do not know, but I suspect that it was a result of using back-crosses when I was tricking AZ into producing something "new and wonderful".

Since I am greedy, and always eager to stabilize every phenotype that Mother AZ deigns to let me have, I returned to the F2 and F3 generations and stabilized three more strains from this gene pool.


Now, bear in mind that these four strains were produced using just one pair from the F1 generation. There were two males and seven females in the F1 generation. Two males mated with seven females would produce fourteen F1 generations to work with and each of these F1 generations would be "different" to some degree. Using TransWarp it is very easy to produce unlimited F1 generations from each pair, and each of those F1 generations would be "unique". You would start to see several similar phenotypes in each F1 generation produced each time but there would also be the occasional "something special" male showing up in a batch. Now, if you apply this same concept to all of the possible pairs in the F2 - F4 generations the word exponential starts to apply to the possible phenotypes that might perhaps be produced from this gene pool. Imagine the possibilities when AZ produces nine males
and eight females in a batch. I do not speculate that the number is infinite but the finite number is quite
large.

Ain't this game fun?!


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