C^T - T-pattern

There are four main pigeon patterns: Barless (c), Bar (C⁺), Checker (C), and T-pattern Checker (C^T). The top dominant of the pattern series is called the T-pattern checker (gene symbol C^T) where a few light edges or triangles as "check" in the wing shield area are visible. T-Pattern check gets its name from the small light colored T in the check pattern of their wing shield feathers which can range from the wing shields showing light colored "T"s on each feather, to having the whole wing look like black. Thus, the common names of this pattern among pigeon fanciers are "velvet", or "blue-tailed black" (See picture on the right). It is also important to note that the T-pattern check phenotype with the help of darkening factors like sooty, dirty, and smoky can easily be confused with a spread phenotype. However, spread is a different mutation located on a different locus and therefore is not part of the pattern series. Unlike spread mutation, the T-pattern check birds have regular flight and tail feathers with the sub-terminal tail band, and albescent strip. In addition, T pattern check birds, just like the rest of the pattern series, might have colored or white rumps where the spread mutation would normally cover the rump feathers. Spread is known to be epistatic to pattern series, therefore when there is a spread gene present in the genotype, it suppresses the effects of pattern and make the pattern not visible in the phenotype. In the blue series, pattern phenotypes are listed in the order of their progressive decreasing amount of black in relation to blue, and it is very interesting that they appear to be epistatic in their hereditary manifestation in the same order, i.e., each to the one that follows. However, when we describe the relationship between the allelic genes, we used the words like dominant, recessive and co-dominant, and use the word epistatic when we describe the relationship between non-allelic genes.

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