The results of the test crosses I set up two months ago are starting to color up. It is always an exciting time because there are always surprises, and there are always fresh insights into guppy mysteries offered up. An example is the guppy above. It was not until I photographed this guppy and cropped the picture when I realized that it was almost identical to the Bader snakeskin sport I have written about here:

http://guppydesigner.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=393&Itemid=229

And here is a picture of the sport (the sport is the guppy below the regular Bader snakeskin phenotype): 

This was an unexpected result of the test cross. The fact the F1 male of the cross has the same basic phenotype of the sport tells me that the sport is probably the result of a "loss" of the snakeskin gene. Since a mutation is exceedingly rare, it has to have been a crossover event. But it the snakeskin gene had merely crossed over from the X to the Y chromosome, then I should not have seen a change in the snakeskin phenotype. Sometimes I think guppy genetics is like a puzzle. Sometimes you find two pieces that fit together but you cannot make out the shape so you do not know where the piece fits into the big picture.

I guess I will just have to continue putting the pieces together until I get the whole picture...

Ronan Boutot's new book on guppies finally arrived on my doorstep (literally), all the way from France. It is published under the Animalia Editions series "L'Aquariophile Practique." There is no good translation in English, but I'll try: "Practical Aquarist."

The book came with a handwritten dedication Ronan lifted from our correspondence, as Ronan is a great guppy friend. It's something I wrote to Ronan in an email last year. I said, "Surely you are the craziest guppy color detective in the world. And I am glad you are, because I would hate for that honor to be bestowed on me." Ronan took it as a great compliment, as he should. After all he was the guy seven years ago who phoned me at 3 a.m. in the morning from Paris, excited about some obscure insight into guppy color. I had some explaining to do in the morning to my groggy wife.

So the book is very appropriately called "Guppy passion." The subtitle is "From the basics to competition." And that is exactly what he has done. The book is 80 pages from on how to get started, through feeding and maintenance, genetics and selecting breeders for their conformance to show standards. He includes both European and North American standards in the book, so it is a book suitable for both European and North American audiences.

The book has great pictures of guppies, mostly according to the European standard, and excellent illustrations to support the more technical areas. One of those areas is the chromatophores, the color cells of guppies. There are only two and half pages devoted to chromatophores, and I know Ronan could have written a whole book on the subject. But the book series it is published under is meant to provide practical information for a wide range of aquarists, and he had to touch on almost all the topics germaine to serious guppy hobbyists.

I think the book is extremely valuable. As far as I know there are no French language books specific to guppies of this calibre anywhere, at least not in print. So we all owe a debt of thanks to Ronan for writing it, as I am sure it will make some money for the publisher and very little for the author. (I speak from experience!) The book is obviously a labour of love and I hope he infects other Francophiles with his form of guppy passion. It will bring a lot of bright minds into the hobby.

Good job Ronan. I will treasure this book.

Drawing of the maculatus strain from Winge's 1927 paper

I have just spent the past two weeks writing about Winge's 1927 paper on guppy genetics "The Location of Eighteen Genes in Lebistes Reticulatus." If you took all the conversations about guppies on all the forums right now, you would discover people are having "Wingean" conversations about guppy genetics, just as if nothing had changed in genetics for 81 years ago. It's all there. The XY sex determination system, genes and patterns, guppy sexual dimorphism, care of the guppy, simple Mendelian genetics. There are new "genes" and the lingo has changed a bit, but the theoretical underpinnings are the same.

I had read the paper before and written about it, but this time I wanted to explore it in detail. It is amazing what you learn when you have to read the text very closely, summarize what he said and then analyze what he said. I paid particular attention to what he says about genes and patterns. This is a subject that is still very much talked about. When somebody says that the Flamenco Dancer has such and such genes, they are continuing a conversation that began with Winge eighty-one years ago.

Well, I was surprised. My first reading must be described as cursory. By focussing on what he says about genes and their relationships with patterns, I was able to draw out a much better idea of what he thought about the relationship between genes and their phenotypical expression. I had assumed he had a simple one-dimensional view, but a closer reading revealed some ambiguity. For example, he tells us that future studies might reveal that many of the genes he documented would be found to be several genes, what he describes as a "gene complex." He conducted some experiments to find out if he could selectively alter the expression of genes. He concluded there were "minor factors" at work, influencing the expression of genes. We might say that he had anticipated the biological pathway. The conclusion I have come to is that Winge is an excellent place to start when exploring the subject of guppy genetics. What makes it particularly valuable is that it is written without the technical jargon that has crept into modern scientific papers and Winge bases what he says on carefully conducted experiments and verifiable observations. That sets him apart from hobbyists discussions. In fact the major criticism I have is that his writing is a bit abtuse. You have to work hard at drawing out the good stuff.

There is another paper he wrote in 1947, at the end of his career, four years after the Carlsbeg guppy lab was closed down (Winge and Ditlevsen, "Colour Inheritance and Sex Determination in Lebistes." It is a kind of book end to the paper written twenty years earlier. In it he discusses the only case where the maculatus dorsal black spot crossed over (although the red spot on the front of the body remained intact). You can see Winge struggling with the issue of homology between the sex chromosomes. As far as I can tell, it would take another 40 years (about 1990) before some of his original ideas could be examined in the light of cytological studies.

By the end of his career, Winge had gone on to secure his reputation and legacy in yeast genetics, and he is now acknowledged as a pioneer in the field of biotechnology.

I had meant to write a simple three page summary of the 18 genes paper as an introduction to the study of genetics. What I found is that guppy genetics can be introduced without a tremendous amount of theoretical discussion, through a discussion of the Winge paper. It has run into about 100 pages and I have not really got to the other major guppy papers I want to discuss. Something tells me I am writing a new book, not just the beginning of the book that I had taken to a second draft. Oh well. I think this new book will be a great introduction to guppy genetics in simple straightforward language. Thanks to Winge.

I had intended to just put his paper on the accompanying DVD for the book so that people could print it out and read it themselves. But what I am thinking now of doing is to expand the book into an overview of the scientific legacy of guppy genetics, thoroughly reviewed and commented on. At the back of the book I would include the papers themselves in a rather large appendix. What do you think? Please comment on the forum.

Philip

Chickens and Guppies 

I have been busy writing the second draft of "Genetics Theory for Guppy Breeders." The only problem is that I have not actually got to the old material. My new first chapter is entirely new. Which means it will have to go to second draft. If this continues, I will be writing the first draft of an entirely new book .

But I am exploring some really interesting information. One of them is about what is held in common between chickens and guppies. Yes, they are both vertebrates. And there is a remarkable dimorphism between the males and females of both species. You do see an incredible variety in the secondary sexual characteristics among roosters and male guppies. And a courting rooster does remind us of a strutting male guppy. But they share something far more fundamental.

That is what I am exploring right now. Apparently the process of dosage compensation and the equalization of the different sex chromosomes is common to both. Might be the key to guppy color polymorphism...don't know yet, but I'll keep you posted.