Snow and Blue question

[Gary Crafton]

I am told by the great snow goose guru, that the blue is the dominant color of the 2 and that somewhere down the line ,it will finally take over and there will be no more white geese, From what i have read , he is correct, but my question is as many thousand white ones i have seen this year, how long would this take, I'm sure it would not be in my lifetime, Do you guys think this could actually ever occur?

[HRK]

with some of the pics of screwed up ducks and geese with white feathers ive seen, anythings possible with all this cross breeding. actually seen a white farm duck this last year with a green head and a mallard tail, all white body and wings. and this thing could fly go fiqure :?

[Gary Crafton]

Lol that was a messed up duck,

[hammer007911]

I am told by the great snow goose guru, that the blue is the dominant color of the 2 and that somewhere down the line ,it will finally take over and there will be no more white geese, From what i have read , he is correct, but my question is as many thousand white ones i have seen this year, how long would this take, I'm sure it would not be in my lifetime, Do you guys think this could actually ever occur?

I do not think it will happen. You see when they are sitting on the nest some years it is white an some years it is not. The few predators eating them will always miss the white ones if there is snow cover thus allowing the white to continue :wink:

It is a Evolution thing the species evolved to be 2 color phases with each having benefits so I look at it as if I would want to be a white snow not a blue. Less of one equals more predation especially if the dominate gene is having trouble becoming even 50% 8)

Hammer

[Killer Miller]

I have never heard anything like that but it could be true.

But if that's truew, why are there way more snows than blues. Because that is a fact! I'd say snows out number blues at least 2:1 whata ya boys think.

And if that is the case, why is it taking so long?

[sneakyreaper]

I always thought blues ar just young snows. :? Had about a million on top of me today, yep Miller 2:1. I think we all need to kill all the nasty sky carp, they smell bad when they fly by. :roll:

[Gary Crafton]

Genetic variation is common among lesser snow geese, the most obvious genetic variation among them is their plumage dimorphism. This blue-white color polymorphism is controlled by two alleles at a single locus. The blue allele (B) is incompletely dominant to the white allele (b) (Cooke et al. 1995). This results in some variation in lesser snow geese with both homozygous (BB) and heterozygous (Bb) displaying blue-phase coloration and homozygous (bb) geese exhibit white-phase coloration. The blue-phase geese range in coloration as described by Cooke on a scale from (2-6), with the higher numbers indicating an increasing level of dark plumage. Categories 2-4 are generally classified as light bellied geese and 5-6 are classified as dark bellied geese. Generally mating between two homozygous (BB) geese produces offspring that exhibit higher color values and decreasing in color values in offspring from (BB)x(Bb) pairings. The lowest color values are found in offspring from two heterozygous (Bb)x(Bb) blue geese or pairings between white geese and blue geese (bb)x(Bb) (Cooke et al. 1995). It is interesting to note that populations of lesser snow geese used to homozygous with white plumage geese in the western range and homozygous blue geese in the east and only as recently the 1950’s have the two populations coming into contact and began interbreeding2. This would signify that the two color phases evolved separately. Currently the western populations are all homozygous white and the two color phase are present in the central breeding grounds with increased frequency of blue phased geese to the nearly all blue phase geese in the eastern populations (Weckstein et al. 2002). The snow geese in the central region are dimorphic in coloration, however they are not evenly distributed in these colonies as one would expect. Since the blue allele exhibits incomplete dominance it is to be expected that there would be an increasing number of blue-phase geese in the central populations. However Cooke’s study provides evidence that something else is at work. There is a high gene flow rate in snow goose populations in the central breeding ground, so there should be a rapid increase in the ratio of blue allele frequency there. Over the course of Cooke’s study there has been a slight and systematic increase in allele frequency among female geese, however this is much slower than would be expected. The male geese from the central populations have experienced no increase in the allele frequency. This paradox is explained by the fact that the lesser snow geese have strong assortative mating preferences with respects to plumage. In the breeding colony at La Perouse Bay, which is in the central breeding grounds, 90.2% of females with two white parents returned with a white male, 78.2 percent of females with two blue parents returned with a blue mate. In cases where the female had mixed parents 62.5 percent acquired white mates and 37.5 percent blue mates (Cooke et al. 1995). With this structure of gene flow the blue-phase allele will increase at a gradual rate over a much longer period then what would occur if mate selection were purely random.
Well as you can see, I have had to much time on my hands, An old man was talking about it the other day so i looked into it a little, This is a little to complicated for me . But i do understand what the last sentence says. Lol

[hammer007911]

Wonder if those geese know they are racist? Selecting a mate by color :oops:

Hammer

[Gary Crafton]

Lol.... well i was going to say something but i will just keep my mouth shut on that one lol............. Hammer if we ever have an avatar contest, you will win hands down