g. m. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>Are the Modifying Genes that produce Mottled and very pied gerbils the
>same in the United Kingdom and United states?
Are you talking about mottled, or spotted, pied etc also?
I first saw pictures of US mottleds about the same time I saw them hear.
>Which country had mottled
>gerbils first
I would guess the US but they didn't cross the Atlantic as such.
>and how did they cross the Atlantic? How did many of the
>colors cross, to end up in the other country?
See http://www.gerbils.co.uk/gerbils/genetic.htm
I have tracked down the appearance of each gene in each region,
including transfers.
>I read here on GML, that
>Burmese went to Portland Oregon from England in some ones pocket (Might
>be confusing several emails) and spread throughout the United States
>after that.
No. Burmese were taken to Oregon (via California) illegally. But they
were not a breeding pair. The person concerned has told me she has never
bred gerbils. c[b] and g were imported later to the US and distributed.
The story of white marked gerbils is as follows:
They appeared in the US in the 60's. In about 1968 a few were brought to
the UK. The UK gerbils, despite selective breeding only ever had
"classic" markings.
In the US, probably sometime in the 80's pied markings appeared. Before
1993 pieds were available in Finland and maybe other parts of mainland
Europe. Whether these gerbils were result of further import from the US
or not is not clear.
In 1995 pieds appeared in the UK. Probably as a result of (illegal?)
imports from Europe. Selective breeding of these produced mottled
gerbils by 1997.
Of course it is possible that a separate pied/mottle mutation appeared
three different times, in the US, Mainland Europe, and the UK (The
Chernobyl theory!). But it seems easier to accept that importation
resulted in a spread of the genes.
--
Julian
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* Jackie and Julian *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* National Gerbil Society *
* http://www.gerbils.co.uk/ *
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