Colour genetics of Archachatina and achatina

[Kitana]

Does anybody have any information on the colour genetics of Archachatina and achatina sp? I would love to know which alleles are dominant, which are recessive and which combinations will produce which colours. I've been told that snail genetics don't work like mammal or reptiles, and 2 albino parents can carry other genes to make coloured babies. Any information is appreciated

[muddydragon]

Hi Kitana,

Others can probably answer better from their own experience. However it seems highly unlikely to just be a simple case of recessive and dominant genes.

The trouble is there is very little research on it. Not only would the genes involved need to be identified (not an easy task without previous work to build on!) but the activity of their promoters, transcription factors and a plethora of other things would likely need to be studied. This would require indepth and expensive studies. Since there is no obvious route through which this study would provide money or advance mankind (other than via knowledge which is why i approve of blueskies research but unfortunatly very few funding bodies agree with me) very few organisations would fund the research and hence i believe no such study has been done.

I vaguely remember from first year lectures many years ago that snails could repair genetic mutations (such as would cause albinism), however this was a long time ago and i am not sure of this at all a quick literature search drew a blank.

I recommend looking on google scholar for any form of mollusc colour genetics research to try and get an idea there may be some work done especially on common food molluscs, it's not ideal but it could help. If you have access to a university log-in web of knowledge is also a good place to look. i'm not sure but maybe your local library could help with accessing papers?

There are people on here with a better knowledge of snail genetics (and almost certainly genetics in general!) than i. Who will hopefully chime in at somepoint.

Sorry i couldn't really be more help, best of luck in your search!

[Kitana]

Thank you for replying It all goes towards my quest! My reason for answering is that I have some snails from albino parents but the babies seem to be silvers (so I was told) I've also never completely understood how you can get albino skinned snails with coloured shells, or maybe that white is just a colour rather than being labelled as albino. I'm currently emailing a few lecturers at university and asking around, I tried google and it did give a little information on a different species of snail, and the genetics of their banding etc but nothing too in depth, I can understand why there isn't a lot of information on it but I'll continue to quest on lol thanks again

[muddydragon]

well shell colour is obviously controlled by something else than the skin colour is it seems.

Something which may help my "albino" skinned margie suturalis have black eye spots (but all their babies have been "albino" with black eye spots) my "full albino" Jadatzi (some think if they're not full albino they should be called rodatzi or something but originally jadatzi was used to refer to the fact it was any sanil with both jade and rodatzi in it's immediate history - of any colour so they would not be confused with "pure" rodatzi) have pink eye spots (what you would expect from true albinos in other parts of the animal kingdom). So i suspect that "albino" margies are not actually albino as they have black eye spots.

However... The first jadatzis came from very early on in the original breeding program to produce them i.e. rodatzi X jade babies crossed back to one another.
The "full albino" babies i got from this later produced all "full albino" babies (with some signs of pink/two toning on the shell - which had apparently been seen in many babies)
the adults were later crossed with (full albino) jadatzi from elsewhere and produced "full albino" and "paler skinned deep silverish with yellow shell" individuals.
one of the adults i hadn't previously let breed (rodatzi in form but of the same parentage as some of the other adults) crossed with a "full albino" jadatzi baby of mine produced "full albino", "light skinned" and "dark skinned" individuals as expected and oddly one single "normal" looking fulica with dark skin and dark shell.

So it is rather odd!

What would be interesting would be to find out what colour eyes jade snails have (someone on here must surely know)

There are people who specialise in snail genetics at various universities they would be worth contacting if you haven't already.

I know that they are incredibly distantly related beign a vertebrate and all and there's obviously lots of other things going on too with snails but i wondered if it was somewhat similar to the axolotl in some aspects: www.axolotl.org/genetics.htm

If you get some nice answers from it you should definitely write a thread on it! i'ld love to hear what you find!
good luck!

[muddydragon]

p.s. if anyone has a pink eyed Archachatina it would be nice to hear about.

[katsumi]

Ive been desperately scouring the internet to find information but there is very limited, I've been emailing a few universitys but no one has replied yet, I'm going to email a few in Nigeria and different parts of west Africa as I think they will know more than anyone
So far, I had read that the reason why snails can be albino skinned and normal shell is they're polymorphic, but it never said how, so I can't trust it completely.

I'll let you know if I find anything

[Lady Escargoth]

Hi
I have pink eyed margies ovum, so they do exist, and when they reproduce with other pink eyes albino margies, they make white skinned babies, with pink eyes

I have never tried mixing a pink eyes one with a black eyed albino though.

Here is a pic of one of my "babies", now grown up, her parent is pink eyes albino We don't see the eye perfectly well, but I can tell there is no black spot.

Well, I saw on the website of the forum that captive bred snails tended to be lighter than wild counterparts. Would if be possible that the black eyed albinos be in fact very pale normal snails?......

Attachments:

[Kitana]

I have a fair few of these! I never realised they were real albinos! I'll try and put some pics up if I knew how to add attachments, I'd be able to put up pics of the 'silver' young too. It is very likely that albinos with black eyes are just a colour white rather than albino (or just very light) I have had a reply from a German professor and he's going to send me some information on colour genetics in achatinids (not sure how to spell that) So as soon as I've read it I can pass the information that I've learned on

[Evil Angel]

Yes I would also say that if there is black pigment within the eye it would mean they are simply a white morph rather true albinos (pink eyed white). How the white colour came about however I wouldn't know, especially as many wild-caught 'albinos' have black pigment, therefore shattering ideas of selective breeding or it being a result of captivity... :/

[muddydragon]

Kitana what colour eyes did the parents of your silver ones have?

I would think that white with black eyes is more likely to be leucistic than a white colour morph. Just that the mutation rather than being in the pigment gene(s) or their TFs. is in genes involved with pigment distribution. the different versions (silver or coloured eye stalks being slightly different versions of leucisitic (perhaps effecting different genes or occuring at a different stage in development))

[Evil Angel]

Leucistic and albino animals are quite alike in regards to how the genes work, but albino will be white with pink eyes and Leucistic will be a pale yellow colour with black eyes. So our 'albinos' with black eyes could very well be Luecistic. However coloured eye stalks is something a bit different from what I've found out, it is meant to be Acromelanic, which is a gene that affects pigment in the way that they cannot form at warm temps, for instance, a rabbit in the womb with this gene would be white, but after it is born its extremities (ears, legs) will develope colour pigment due to those areas being slightly cooler, so would explain the darker stalks

[Lady Escargoth]

A really interesting topic
My albinos, I wouldn't say that they are white. They look rather vanilla colored? Usually, albino margies are yellowish, they are born white, and they darken with age.

[Kitana]

Well guys after a fair few days/weeks spent on research and contacting countless universities and professors about it I have come to a conclusion (that other researchers have come to as well but it's not set in stone)
I've always wanted to know why it is that you can get albino skinned snails, but their shells are still coloured? It's bugged me because that's not how albinism works, but I was also told that snail genetics work differently. In Africa studies were conducted with collecting wild snails and breeding them to see the offspring, different researchers did different species but mainly A.Fulica A.Achatina A.Marginata and L.Flammulata were collected, I mainly followed the A.Fulica and A.Achatina studies, but more than one study mentioned the fact that when collection from different areas, the white bodied snails were found in urban and populated areas, whereas the dark bodied snails were found in rural and unpopulated areas, white bodied snails were not found in the unpopulated areas. Then the pairing happened so it was about 30 pairs of snails kept in the same conditions, dark skinned x dark skinned, dark skinned x white skinned and white skinned x white skinned, results were collected on their young but it was confusing to see that white skinned x dark skinned were producing (on average) roughly the same amount of light and dark skinned babies, something which just wouldn't occur with albinism.

Now we've all seen Jadatzi been labelled as 'pure albinos' as they have white skin and yellow shells, well it turns out that the yellow colour is actually just a BASE colour, and the shells are just unbanded and unpatterned which was proven to be a recessive allele through breeding A.Fulica Hammelli.

Now I'm just giving a quick brief of the information I gathered and on the studies, they were obviously in a lot more depth but it's a long thing to explain, but as no one knows the exact genes for colour as it's not worth doing due to expense and time, the most believable and explainable theory is that albinism in snails is actually incredibly rare, possibly unseen, and the white skinned 'albinos' that we see are actually just a colour in itself, and as it's a colour in itself it has various forms of lightness or darkness, the white bodied snails collected from the wild all lived in urban areas suggesting that it was controlled by the snails maybe for reasons of camouflage I don't know, but there was definitely evidence to suggest that!

This would be a perfect reason to describe why my 'albino' (pinkish eyed) Marginatas had babies that were both 'albinos' like them and also the very, very feint silver babies too (which I always assumed were leucisitc). It would also explain why dark skinned x white skinned had white skinned offspring and it would also fit in with the fact 'albino' skinned had normal coloured shells.

If more research is ever done on the genetics of snails in more depth, it may turn out that I'm completely wrong, and that's the magic of science! but for now I'm taking this at face value that 'albinism' in snails is just another colouring with various shades miss-labelled Will I convince the world otherwise? Of course not lol and I don't really care, I'm just sharing the information that I was given and how it was interpreted to make me more aware of the mistakes and misinformation that I have given and received....plus I got to meet a lot of people and drink a lot of red bull along the way!

[Evil Angel]

It is seen a lot with mammal breeding that most animals with pink eyes and white bodies aren't true albinos, for instance P.E.W rats, mice, rabbits. They may look like albinos, but they're eye colour and coat colour are from 2 seperate colour genes merging and hence giving them the appearance of being 'albino' but while really being simply whites with pink eye gene. This could be the same for snails, and could explain both P.E.W and black eyed white snails and that true albinos could be a much rarer thing than we think, or of course it could be that P.E.W snails are the true albinos and that black-eyed are some Luecistic form... Without the tests done I doubt we'll know for sure as both seem quite plausible to me!

[katsumi]

It's very debatable, which is a good thing! I guess if you really wanted to know people can take their 'albino' and breed it with a dark skin and see what type of babies you get, and white skinned babies surely prove it's not a true albino? Even if it turns out that the shells are separate gene colour control which isn't unlikely at all, then it's really a case of never knowing unless we get the genetic coding of the snail. I've read the studies on PEW mice, and I don't see why it's a farfetched idea that the same thing could be happening with snails. It seems that snail genetics aren't as complicated as they're made out to be, but due to the decades of inbreeding and captive breeding, a lot of mutations and changes have occurred and the confusion came with labelling them all as 'albino'

[katsumi]

Side note - I'm kitana lol I have 2 accounts as I had forgotten my password for one account and created a new one, but recently retrieved my password and it automatically logs in to this account on my phone :s sorry for the confusion.

[muddydragon]

some white skinned babies with a dark skinned one would not prove it was not an albino as the dark skinned one could carry albino genes. assuming they are a diploid species if the ratio was obviously much more than half then you would know they were not albino (but you would need a lot of babies to prove that)

I am introducing some dark skinned and various colours to my black eyed whites or leucistics or whatever they may be! aka look albino with black eyes to introduce some new blood. I will let you know what i get in the future

Can i ask where you found out the dark eyestalk ones were acromelanic? i'm really curious i'ld love to read about it. Obviously i've heard of this in mammals where the extremities are cooler. Such as siamese cats kittens have less well defined points as they are snuggled with mum and they develop more as they become independent and that strays tend to be darker as they are not kept in nice warm houses! The thing is mammals being endotherms you can understand extrematies being cooler, so that the pigment protein(s) are not broken down resulting in that pattern. But snails are exotherms kept in warm tanks by us of varying temperatures depending on the temperature the person keeps them in. I've never had a dark eyestalk one but why would the eyestalks necessarily be cooler - ok so i don't know how good they are at storing heat (also do they have dark anywhere else - such as the raised V or feelers or any other extremity?) if they were acromelanic wouldn't those kept in warmer tanks not show this pattern and those in cooler tanks look almost completely dark?

[Evil Angel]

Well most of this comes from my siamese rat breeding days, but also the fact they were also quite young (2-3 weeks old) when they arrived on my doorstep, and the colour was hardly there at all, but over the next week or so I did notice their colour growing darker into a visible brown.

Whether they're in a warm tank or not the colour would still develop, as the eye stalks would still be cooler than the core of the snail even in a warm tank, the same way kittens, etc with this gene would develop the colour even when kept in a toasty house. It is not the temp of the tank that would control the gene, but the body temp of the animal it's self, whether in a warmer or cooler tank, there will still be some areas of the snail's which are cooler than the core. For example, even on a super-hot summers day, your feet will still be a slightly different temp than your torso.

It can only affect the 'points' (nose, ears, tail, paws), but in some animals it's also able to affect more of the creature (entire head, limbs, tail) depending on the species, but with the snail it seems it is the eye-stalks, top of the head/neck that get affected as those areas would be a slightly cooler temp than the rest of the body, but I wouldn't imagine the 'v' could get colour as it's closer to the body's core



But of course, I could be wrong, and it could just be people calling them 'acromelanic' just because they look like acromelanics lol

[katsumi]

Well the problem was that they took results from more than one batch of eggs, it was about 4 batches but they did separate countings for each batch, even if the dark skinned had the albino gene and mated with an albino skinned, that's still only a 25% chance of albino babies, and per batch it sometimes it was around half albino half dark, sometimes 1/3 albino and 2/3rds dark and sometimes it was more albino than dark skinned. Now it didn't take into account the amount of unhatched eggs which could have made a difference.

Evil, the snails you have on the picture above are the colour of the babies that I had, the whole reason why I started my quest lol I originally thought they were leucistic, but it was only when somebody commented on the add and said they weren't leucistic but silver bodied, and that it doesn't matter if the parents aren't albino, they can still have albino babies, which yes ok if they carried the gene, but from one batch there were slightly more albinos than leucistics. It's been great finding out info, I'm more in the know now if anything .... well, a little bit more in the know

[muddydragon]

50% chance of albino babies surely for a diploid if the dark skined carried an albino gene and was crossed with an albino? (shout at me if i'm being an idiot just finished a massive piece of work and my brain's melting!)

I'm hoping to cross some of my black eyed albino type ones (ok so black eyed white or leucistic or something but you know what i mean) with various colours (silver, "leucistic or acromelanic", "normal" etc) to introduce new blood but i'll also let you know what babies i get (but this will be in several years time!)

evil: the reason i think they may be leucisitic rather than acromelanic is that humans, rats, cats etc are all endotherms (generate and regulate their own body temperatures so regardless of environment there will be this controlled body temperature and hence cooler and warmer areas always within roughly the same temperature range will exist the so points will still develop) but snails are exotherms i.e. they rely on heat from outside of their body and they do not have internal regulation i.e. the temperature of the surroundings = the temperature of the snail's body (roughly) and hence presumably acromelanic ones in warmer tanks would have less to no pigment compared to ones in cooler tanks which would have much more pigment.

Reguardless aren't they SOOOO Beautiful?! i'm jealous of your babies

[Evil Angel]

My Silvers:

Silvers tend to have a blue tinge to them.

Acromelanic however is albino-cream with brown head/stripe:



leucistic causes albino but with normal coloured eyes, but there is a sort of leucistic gene called hypopigmention which gives a piebald effect, but that would be completely random colouring and not just constantly the same brown head/stripe..

So I personally wouldn't say either form was leuism as they just don't fit with it imo. silvers i am completely stumped with and have no clue on what caues it, I would still think that acromelanics are just that, acromelanics, as it fits in terms of colouring, area of colouring and also in that it develops over time, however if they are the same temp exactly over their whole body then we would need to assume it develops another way maybe? or maybe it's just that snails have their own unique colour genes because this all stumps me haha ;D

[katsumi]

No no you're right, 50% for a carrier and albino. I made a mistake up there it should be 50% not 25 but the rest is still applicable lol I don't see a problem with calling them albinos as along as its not applied too much towards the genetic colouration of offspring, I told a girl once about what type of young to expect following the rules of albinism so now I know now that I was wrong.

I'm going to be doing some breeding research too, but first I need to get a dark skinned Marginata. It would be very interesting if people would post their findings on here too.

I like calling the white body black eyed snail leucistic! It sounds better and shorter to say, and why not if other people get to call them albinos and they're not? Or untrue leucistics... something like that

[muddydragon]

Some leucistics in some species cause some head/back colouring e.g.: www.axolotl.org/genetics.htm
You have some lovely looking snails evil.

i am intrigued by your guys katsumi however (that had the silver babies) do you know what their parents were like (or any further back in the tree?)

My "albinos" i.e. black eyed white or leucistic or whatever have only ever produced black eyed white babies ( i think i shall be directing any buyers when i sell more babies to this thread haha!).

I had two to start with all white with black eyes (nessus and Watson) Watson was a rescue case (white black eyes), nessus came from a seller on here selling "albinos" (probably black eyed ones too) and was also black eyed white, these two were almost certainly unrelated (directly anyway). They had Loki, Freyr, Freyja, fenrir and (the deceased) Thor who are all massive black eyed whites/leucistics or whatever : petsnails.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=snailpictures&thread=12308&page=1
These guys have had far too many babies! i'm going to start freezing eggs soon as they've probably had in the region of 70 by now! every single one has been completely white with black eyes i have never had anything else.

So im curious about any history of your black eyed whites/leucistics (or whatever we should call them!) that produced the silvers did they have some dark skinned individuals in their ancestory do you know? Could it be a case of epigenetics maybe? have they ever been kept with anything else other than black eyed white individuals?

I think it's going to be really exciting to hear the results of all the various cross colour breedings!!

[Evil Angel]

Half of my silvers were from Martin Goss, the parent's were both albinos (most likely related), so I was quite surprised when I opened the box to find the babies I had bought were silvers! The parents did also produce some albino babies, but from what I remember, I believe the majority were silver bodied.

That is very interesting Muddydragon! However that would surely only cause random spots/patches as the photo shows, and not a specific pattern?

[katsumi]

I e-mailed the guy I bought them from, and he said that they were albinos but a picture of them shows pink eyed albinos but more of a darker yellow than white so I'm just as confused, I was happy to call them leucistics until someone told me that they were 100% sure they were silvers, well...after this study I know they're not silvers but whites with dark eyes to which I'm going to call leucistics. I'm going to pop some pics up so you can see. If you ever wanted to sell the eggs I'd be interested in a few batches, I'm always looking for some, especially eggs. What about if we call pink eyed whites albinos and call black eyed whites leucistics? I'd need to do some heavy breeding to see if there's any correlation with dominant genes, my guess would be that 'leucistics' are dominant over albino (even though I had more albino than leucis - it could just be pure coincidence)