The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual charactersMorgan, Thomas Hunt
Science
The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual characters
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Genetics; Poultry; Sex (Biology)
Amongst the uniform or single-colored races, the whites, blacks, reds,
and buffs have been studied. Bateson and Punnett were the first to show
that the white of the White Leghorn is dominant. They also showed that
the white of the White Rose Comb bantams is recessive. Another white,
that of the White Silky, is also recessive, but due to a different
factor from the white factor of the Rose Comb bantams; for, when these
two whites are bred together they give colored birds in the first
generation. Hurst showed later that the white of the Leghorn is dominant
over the black of the Hamburg and the buff of the Cochin. The dominance
is often not complete, since tints of black or of buff or even patches
of these colors may occur. The latter may be confined to the head, neck,
and breast. The black plumage of the Hamburg is dominant over the buff
of the Cochins, but incompletely so, as the black background may be
marked and shaded with brown. Whether we are dealing here with one pair
of factors, or two pairs, could only be determined by an F₂ ratio;
whether it is 3:1 or 9:3:3:1.
The blue color of the Andalusian is known not to be a simple color, but
to be a fine mosaic of splashed white and black. The color is produced
in birds that are heterozygous for splashed white and black, or at least
for certain kinds of white and black. This relation was first
demonstrated by Bateson and Punnett (1902 and 1905) and later Saunders
(1906). It appears also from certain crosses made by Davenport that some
of the whites (such as that of the Leghorn) and black (such as that of
the Minorca) may at times also give some blue birds when crossed.
Whether there are also other races with dominant white color different
from that of the Andalusian white (and the same holds for black races
also) or whether a special (recessive) white was present in this cross
when the blue appeared, was not made out by Davenport.
Lippincott has recently studied the Andalusian cross and obtained
essentially the same results as his predecessors. He calls attention to
an interesting fact in the splashed whites, namely, that the color
splashes are blue when they are found in those parts of the body where
the color is blue in the Andalusian. Although the Andalusian is always
spoken of as a blue bird, the hen only is entirely blue, while the male
is black above and blue below. The splashes on a white male correspond
to the black and blue of the Andalusian male, and are black if above and
blue if below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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