9. X-Pigeons |
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~ X-Pigeons (the mutants) ~
The rock-dove (Columba livia), is the wild-type (the standard against which we judge every other mutations) in pigeon genetics. The Scientific name "Columba livia" is Latin for dove or pigeon; "livia" means blue or blue-gray color. Every other color and pattern or every other trait from the wild-type is considered to be a mutant.
"The basic standard
spelling of a gene–the one that exist in the wild–is
called, logically, wild-type, and a mutation can change a wild-type
to something strange and new (“forward mutation”) or
from something strange and new back to the standard wild-type spelling
(“reverse mutation”). Mutations can occur both somatic
cells, the cells that make up the parts of the body (soma in Greek
for “body”), or in germinal or sex cells, the ones that
become sperm and eggs" (Chandler Burr, A separate creation,
p. 144).
The word mutation comes from the Latin word meaning "to change". In pigeons the mutation could happen in the phenotype (The physical appearance of the pigeon) as feather color and patterns, feather ornaments, and the size of the pigeon. It could also happen in flight speed and flight style like racing homers, various tumblers and various rollers. In addition, mutation can change their voice as we see it in trumpeters, etc.
The genetic symbol for the wild-type is (+). We use the + sign for the wild-type because it is the unknown where we compare every other mutations. We normally use the English names of the mutations to provide the genetic symbols for them. Bh for baldhead, C for checker, cr for crest, d for dilute, r for reduced, G for grizzle, etc. However, all the symbols we used in genetics are not English. Norwegian scientists were to first ones on reporting on almond color in pigeon genetics and to report their findings they used the first letters St, which became the symbol used worldwide. In pigeon genetics al represents the albino, where St is the symbol for the almond.
When we find a new mutation, we compare it to wild-type and determine if it is recessive, dominant, or co-dominant. If the new mutation is recessive to the wild-type, we indicate this with a lower case letter. Any particular mutation is dominant or co-dominant to the wild-type is indicated with a capital letter. Ash red BA, is dominant to wild-type (+), but brown b is recessive to wild-type. In addition, we use superscript for allelism where St is the symbol for almond, but its allele faded is represented as StF and similarly qualmond is represented as StQ.
The list of known Pigeon mutations