A mosaic (intense-dilute) coat pattern in the rabbit

✍ Scribed by Castle, W. E.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1929
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 483 KB
• Volume: 52
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-104X
• DOI: 10.1002/jez.1400520306

✦ Synopsis

ONE FIQURE

Dilute coat pigment, in the rabbit, as in the mouse, is recessive in crosses to intense pigment. Dominance is regularly complete and segregation clean. Thus a black X blue cross produces black F, offspring, and a back-cross of Fl black to blue produces equal numbers of black and of blue progeny. All of these results are typically mendelian.

Rabbit fanciers in producing Dutch belted animals for exhibition recommend crossing black Dutch with blue Dutch, believing the caloration to be 'richer and clearer' in consequence, It is doubtful whether this idea is based on any known genetic facts; nevertheless, such is the practice of fanciers and such their justification of it.

Some years ago I purchased a pair of black Dutch rabbits from a fancier who had won numerous prizes for the excellence of his stock a t Boston shows. I was not surprised to find that these animals were heterozygous for intensity and dilution as well as for two different allelomorphic forms of Dutch, which I have elsewhere designated 'white' and 'dark.'

The desired pattern of exhibition Dutch is commonly found in such heterosygous animals. I employed these Dutch rabbits in studies of the linkage relations of Dutch with other characters of the rabbit, in particular with Angora, which was found to be linked with Dutch. I n the course of these studies the Dutch male was crossed with two black self Angora females. Two F, animals, one from each of the matings mentioned, were mated to produce 471