A question in deer genetics

Does anyone know of the genetic around colour determination in fallow.

I'm an idiot with genetics but if anyone here is genetically minded which are the dominant and recessive alleles for colour determination in fallow? Could there be a co dominant or incomplete dominant situation that explains colours that share characteristics of more than one typical colour variation? I’m interested to know for the simple fact that I love any knowledge regarding deer.

I know people would naturally think black is dominant being that it is visually darker but I've only ever seen one black fawn in a local population I hunt and its mother was menil and I've never seen a black buck there. It could be that he's alluded me and I've just never seen him but I don't know. "Common" would therefore have to be dominant but it's not like a dominant colour to be the common colour in most populations. Then you can look at fallow in Tasmania which are almost all black though occasionally there is a white or normal pop up but vary rarely a menil. So that would lead me to think that black is dominant.

White and menil showing up as rarely and inconsistently as they do would make me think it's maybe recessive.

Don't know, but if anyone does I'd love to hear!

alternatively if someone knows of a study already done and can forward on a link that'd be great.

Maybe @Rushy if you might know good sir?

I could be wrong but i don't think there is a "dominant" colour phase gene.
Maybe white is a bit recessive? But more likely they get shot because they stick out like dogs balls.
Common is only called that because its the common phase where we got them from.
Locally most herds are Common or Melanistic with a spattering of Menal with white being very rare.
Because that is what was released.
My father released Common and Melanistic 25 odd years ago.
Eventually a white doe was born and she would be 14-16 years old now... Two years ago she had a white fawn.
Also some of the herd are now Menil.

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Originally Posted by Bavarian_Hunter

Maybe @Rushy if you might know good sir?

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No mate sorry. I am not that into the detail about anything. I only shoot them and don't care if they are black white if brindle. They all taste the same.

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Originally Posted by veitnamcam

I could be wrong but i don't think there is a "dominant" colour phase gene.
Maybe white is a bit recessive? But more likely they get shot because they stick out like dogs balls.
Common is only called that because its the common phase where we got them from.
Locally most herds are Common or Melanistic with a spattering of Menal with white being very rare.
Because that is what was released.
My father released Common and Melanistic 25 odd years ago.
Eventually a white doe was born and she would be 14-16 years old now... Two years ago she had a white fawn.
Also some of the herd are now Menil.

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That is interesting, you're right though for the sake of this topic I should've used "red" instead of "common". The trick would be that two recessive deer of the same colour could only produce another deer of that colour. Similarly if there are two deer of the same dominant alleles they would have to theortically produce the same coloured offspring although they could pass on other recessive genes which you wouldn't see.

At the risk of getting a bollocking, i can tell you that a well respected member of that " other" forum who uses the handle Grandad, will almost definately have the answers you seek

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Originally Posted by Pengy

At the risk of getting a bollocking, i can tell you that a well respected member of that " other" forum who uses the handle Grandad, will almost definately have the answers you seek

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He told me it was impossible to breed a white herd, yet there is a paddock full of em on the farm next door to where i grew up.
Basicly called me a liar and i knew nothing because i only had 10 posts or whatever.

So while fallow is is passion and he is quite knowledgeable he also can be an arrogant prick and not admit when he is wrong.

If you really want an answer instead of best guesses i suggest you ask elsewhere unless one of our fine members studyed genetics

That surprises me a bit Cam. Thought he was a good bugger. Just goes to show aye

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Originally Posted by Pengy

That surprises me a bit Cam. Thought he was a good bugger. Just goes to show aye

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Thread might still be there somewhere.

Well I know for certain that's untrue, I have a good family friend who is a deer farmer and for about 20 years he's had a little white herd in a two acre paddock next to his house. They always produce white fawns.

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Originally Posted by Bavarian_Hunter

Well I know for certain that's untrue, I have a good family friend who is a deer farmer and for about 20 years he's had a little white herd in a two acre paddock next to his house. They always produce white fawns.

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Liar!!!! :D


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free

Ive got access to online journals via my uni work. Ill do a search tonight and get back to you with what i find.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by veitnamcam

He told me it was impossible to breed a white herd, yet there is a paddock full of em on the farm next door to where i grew up.
Basicly called me a liar and i knew nothing because i only had 10 posts or whatever.

So while fallow is is passion and he is quite knowledgeable he also can be an arrogant prick and not admit when he is wrong.

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Don't hold back VC. Tell it like it is.

He wrote a book, you can get them online
Son Of The Mist - Halcyon Publishing Online Store & Catalogue

Still working on the genetic side, but did stumble upon colour vision in fallow deer with the abstract (summary) of the paper bellow:

To examine whether fallow deer, Dama dama, have colour vision, we trained four adult females on a two-choice discrimination task, where a positive chromatic stimulus (green) and a negative achromatic stimulus (grey) had similar brightness. The criterion for learning was set at 80% correct responses. To exclude the possibility that the hinds used small differences in brightness to distinguish between the green and the grey stimulus, we conducted a test that differed from the training situation. A light green positive stimulus combined with a dark grey negative stimulus was alternated with a dark green positive stimulus combined with a light grey negative stimulus on every second trial. The positive green stimuli had different reflectance spectra. After training, each of the four hinds showed over 80% correct responses in the test. These results suggest that fallow deer can use colour vision in a discrimination situation by generalizing over slightly different colours, at least in the range of the green spectrum.

Getting closer but not quite there. It seems the old fallow don't necessarily have an advantage when it comes to mating season:

Background

Assortative mating can help explain how genetic variation for male quality is maintained even in highly polygynous species. Here, we present a longitudinal study examining how female and male ages, as well as male social dominance, affect assortative mating in fallow deer (Dama dama) over 10 years. Assortative mating could help explain the substantial proportion of females that do not mate with prime-aged, high ranking males, despite very high mating skew. We investigated the temporal pattern of female and male matings, and the relationship between female age and the age and dominance of their mates.

Results

The peak of yearling female matings was four days later than the peak for older females. Younger females, and especially yearlings, mated with younger and lower-ranking males than older females. Similarly, young males and lower-ranking males mated with younger females than older males and higher-ranking males. Furthermore, the timing of matings by young males coincided with the peak of yearling female matings, whereas the timing of older male matings (irrespective of rank) coincided with the peak of older female matings.

Conclusions

Assortative mating, through a combination of indirect and/or direct female mate choice, can help explain the persistence of genetic variation for male traits associated with reproductive success.

There are a few interesting papers done on mating systems as fallow use several different ones. The "lek" system has been shown to be the most productive which is very interesting for a deer species I think.