Do you know if this color pattern is sex-linked? The reason I ask is that in mammals it is; for example, 'calico' cats, in which only females display tricolor coat patterns.
What did you do with your tank(s) today?
- Thread starter DMD123
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Good question, not sure if that is the case with goldfish too... Now you got me wondering. The vendors are selling both male and female of what they call "Tricolor".
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Actually, now that I think about it, I've sort of answered the question already in one of my previous posts, the one in which I indicated that goldfish are tetraploid. So even if this were a sex-linked trait, a tetraploid organism has two copies of each sex chromosome, so you could have both male and female tricolors. And obviously the vendor has both. In the bigger picture, this is likely to be one reason that there are so many goldfish lines with all these exotic mutations, because tetraploidy allows them to carry those mutations without suffering the consequences of linked genetic lethals. The same thing happens in tetraploid crop species, e. g. maize.