Breeding Fulica

[millza86]

Just a quick question and you may thin i'm stupid for asking,

If you breed Albino Achatina Fulica with eachother, can you end up with Albino bodies and albino shells?

Also, some of the babies I have have got different shells. Some look 'normal' others look more flat without a point on the end.

There is no-way that these snails have bred with a different species, I'm guessing the shells will sort themselves out once they start to grow more, they are only tiny at the moment, all babies up to this point have been fine, this is probably their 5th batch of eggs this year!

Any help greatly appreciated

[ness]

It's not a daft question at all ;D

There are two genetic lines of albino-bodied fulica.
One is known as Jade (Achatina fulica var. jade)
Breeding two of these together will result in the babies looking like their parents, i.e. albino bodies, striped shells.

The other genetic line is known as jadatzi. This line came from a a jade and a rodatzi (Achatina fulica var.hamillei f.rodatzi - dark body, plain shell), and the 1st generation of offspring being bred together. this resulted in a 2nd generation consisting of four different colour forms of fulica. The forms that look like Jades (Achatina fulica var.jadatzi f.jade) may, or may not, posess genes for a plain rodatzi-type shell. This gene is recessive, so if BOTH the albino bodied fulica are from the jadatzi genetic line AND they contain the recessive rodatzi shell gene then some of the babies (mathematically it should be a quarter) are likely to be fully albino jadatzis - Achatina fulica var jadatzi f.construct.

So in short it dpends upon which genetic line your snails are from, and if it's the jadatzi line, it also depends if they both happen to carry the rodatzi-shell gene.
If they are pure-bred jades then only a rare genetic anomoly will produce this variation, and I've never heard of this happening.

Also to note is that stripes show up quicker on some snails than others. It varies from egg clutch to egg clutch. It often takes anywhere from one to five weeks for stripes to start to show, possibly longer in some cases.

Why do some have flattened shells and others pointy? I don't know the answer. However featurre I have noticed this in some clutches of fulica. In my own experience the flattened shelled fulica usually don't grow very large, however that's just my own experience.

[millza86]

It all starts making sense, lol Thank-you very much

[fabrizio]

Very useful and clear summing up of the whole matter, thank you Ness

I would encourage even to watch at the "flattened" shells, following their development.

As new interesting morphs are obtained as to body/shell colour, still more are surely possible, as it concerns shell's shape!

Why not try and engage in that, too?

-Some pictures of your flat-shelled fulicas would be very appreciated, if you could post them