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Cultivated forms and color morphs – Designer woodlice
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Updates on our latest breeding forms.
Isopods are now offered in a wide variety of breeding colors and patterns, so-called color morphs (morph = shape). The selection of beautifully colored, special or rare specimens is constantly increasing.
Our breeding stock also contains such mutations, which I will report on regularly on this page. It is important to me to inform you about everything from the discovery of a new color morph to breeding and selection.
We dedicate part of our daily work to our Isopod color morphs. We distinguish between the naturally occurring mutations and the so-called designer morphs.
While albinos, orange, caramel, dalmatian or high yellow, for example, were all discovered at some point in the wild or in domestic breeding and are “purebred” at the same time, designer morphs are combinations of two or more natural mutations.
Oniscus asellus mardi gras
What does heterozygous actually mean?
For example, if you take two purebred parents, a Porcellio laevis (dominant, green) and mate them with a Porcellio laevis “Panda” (recessive, white), the offspring are heterozygous. The offspring carry the panda gene and the wild color gene. In this constellation, the offspring look wild-colored, but are heterozygous for panda.
Heterozygous is the term used when a healthy gene is found on one chromosome alongside a “mutated” gene on the other chromosome. The expression of the mutation is then often suppressed and completely compensated for by the “healthy” gene (=recessive inheritance)
Porcellio ornatus sandstone
What happens when we mate heterozygous offspring with each other?
The second example shows the mating of this so-called F1 generation. In other words, the offspring from our first example. It is normal to mate the siblings with each other in order to carry out a color selection. Abnormalities such as deformities or short stature should be removed from the breeding stock.
In our example we mate 2 Porcellio laevis “het.(heterozygous) Panda”.
The juvenile isopods would then be as follows:
1 x Porcellio laevis,
2 x Porcellio laevis “het. Panda”
1 x Porcellio laevis “Panda”
Of course we will produce more young isopods in a mating. This number must then simply be put into proportion: 25% Porcellio laevis ; 50% Porcellio laevis “het. Panda” ; 25% Porcellio laevis “Panda”
Porcellio hoffmannseggi brown & Porcellio spec. morocco 8i
What does the (T) mean for albinos and what is the difference between (T-) and (T+)?
The T stands for tyrosinase, which is significantly involved in the production of melanin in animals and humans, among other things. Melanins are color pigments that give our hair, skin or eyes their color. It is the same with Isopods. Melanins are responsible for how our Isopods are colored. The main thing that all Isopods “suffering” from albinism have in common is the lack of melanin pigments.
In a T-albino, the tyrosinase is either completely defective or not present at all. As a result, the animals no longer have any melanin pigments and appear white with red eyes. The eyes are not red, but you can see the red blood vessels due to the lack of pigmentation.
The T+ albino has a functioning tyrosinase and therefore melanin pigments are also present. However, due to a lack of proteins, the T+ albino can only carry out the first two or three steps of the melanin process and therefore cannot produce dark color pigments. As a result, T+ albinos usually stand out due to their caramel-colored appearance.
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