Re: Aphysemion australe gold

["Prof D U Bellstedt, Biochemie" <Dub at land_sun.ac.za>]

Hi All,

About a year ago, a friend of mine from Berlin, Germany, 
brought me some specimens of Aphysemion australe gold. Although 
common in the rest of the world, they are hard to come by here in 
South Africa. The one strain that was in the country was severely 
inbred and I felt that some 'new blood' would do wonders. These 
fishes were carefully chosen from two different dealers so that the 
material brought in furthermore had greater genetic diversity. The 
original fish have produced quite a few offspring (F1) and these 
have been bred into the local strain with the result that the strain 
is far better established here now. Some of the F1 offspring could be 
called 'standard' male and female A australe gold i.e. the males as 
shown in the AKA gallery and the females with the pale yellow 
colouration. However, some of the F1 females are bright canary yellow 
and some of the F1 males look like 'normal' A australe gold but they 
do not have the brown markings in the tail. These females are quite 
striking, the males on the other hand do not look so attractive as 
the contrasting colours in the tail are absent. My assumption is that 
this coloration is the result of the combination of the two different 
strains that were originally obtained.

My questions are:

1) Is this a common form of A australe gold?
2) Do the golden yellow females have the same genetic makeup as the 
males described above.
3) If the males and females are of the same genetic makeup how does 
this fit in with the recently described inheritance patterns of A 
australe gold. Are these perhaps the fish with the genotype aabb, and 
are the other golden types aaB_ or A_bb?

The publication that I am referring to is that of Frankel, J.S. 1997, 
"Inheritance of body coloration in the lyretail toothcarp (Aphysemion 
australe Cypriodontidae), J. Hered. 88(5): 445 - 446.

This publication was discussed by Bruce J Turner, Dept Biology, VPISU 
Blacksburg, VA on some mailing lists. He indicated that coloration 
was controlled by two recessive autosomal recessive genes. All fish 
with A_B_ are brown or 'wildtype' and with aaB_, A_bb or aabb are 
orange.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Dirk Bellstedt


Professor Dirk U. Bellstedt
Department of Biochemistry,
University of Stellenbosch,
Stellenbosch 7602,
South Africa
Tel: +27-21-8083032
Fax: +27-21-8083022

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