White - Faced Robos

[Tammy22]

Hi Everyone,

this is a bit of a strange question but can anyone help me?

I had the follwong email from someone this morning:


You may remember me contacting you in March regarding some clarification on whether I had ‘White-Faced’ or ‘Husky’ Roborovski Hamsters. As I had only managed to obtain two females I crossed to Normals with the result that I have only ever obtained Normals. At that point it looked that the gene that was producing the ‘paleness’ in colouring whether called ‘White-Faced’ or ‘Husky’ was recessive, although any information that I could find suggested that is was a dominant gene.

As a Biology teacher I was curious. Since then I have done a F1 back cross [Normal appearance] with the (white) mother and sure enough in the litter produced there were Normals and the three hamsters [digital photograph attached].

It is a recessive gene. These individuals actually seem paler than their mother and as you see they are certainly very attractive little animals.


I dont know if it is just me, but i cant seem to get my head round what he is talking about! it has really confused me as to what he is trying to say - can anyone give me an answer for him? I think i must still be asleep, as this is just not making sense to me at all!

Thanks,

Tammy x

I think he's saying that his "tests" show that husky/white-faced is a recessive gene rather than dominant as he's read everywhere - if husky was dominant, then there should have been some husky babies in his litter but they've all been normal.

That's my amateur interpretation anyway Tammy!
xx

[Tammy22]

Thanks Justine

I was sort of getting a similar idea - but the White - Faced Gene is dominant??

Tammy x

[WE55EX HAMSTERY]

I have come across this which mentions it to be a recessive gene:

http://homepage.mac.com/dymph/roborovski/index.html

I had always thought that it was a dominant one but this could possibly show that there are two genes that can produce a Husky.

Can we also see the photo?

[Tammy22]

Oh yes, sorry about that, here is one of the pics:

I have looked on that website many times - it is very good and very interesting too.

Tammy x

[internet_nobody]

From what I have seen people breed it is dominant...trouble is throw a little bit of biology education into the works and you suddenly think you're the bees knees in genetics (I think a few of us are guilty of this - and I am about to do it now :P).

His "F1" to "White faced Mum" shows nothing...because:

Assuming it is Dominant, and using "H" to denote the husky gene...

White Faced Mum (I'll call her F0 female) could either be HH or Hh. You cross her to a normal male (F0 male) who is hh.
You get F1 babies, who all look normal and are therefore hh (if they had inherited "H" from Mum they'd be white faced.. Cross F1 back to F0 female you're repeating your original cross, but this time you happen to get Hh and hh babies.

Assuming it is Recessive, F0 female is hh, F0 male could be HH or Hh. F1 babies all look normal, but have to be Hh (if they were hh they were white, and they have to inherit "h" from Mum).
You then cross F1 baby back to F0 female, hh to Hh, and get hh (white faced) and Hh (normal) babies.

It looks like he's assumed that nature agrees with probabilities, and that because if Husky is dominant his F1 litter should have been 50% normal, 50% husky...but sperm and eggs don't know maths ;)

If he crosses F1 female to F0 male and then gets white faces, then it would show it is recessive...he's done the wrong cross.

[Tammy22]

Thank you so much IN

All of this is far too complicated for me!

I will send him a link to this post!!

Thanks again,

Tammy x

[NaomiR]

interestingly enough I have just had a (what I would call) second generation "white faced" litter, ie 1 parent (Dad) is full Husky Mum is normal but 1 of her parents (also Dad) was Husky - so it will be interesting to see what they babies look like.

Unfortunately they are only 3 days old at the moment, it was a bit of a surprise litter as I had decided not to actively breed robos (or any hammies) but found it impossible to seperate an established pair who had never previously bred.

So if you're struggling to get your hammies all loved up and in "the mood" send them round here, something about the ambiance in my shed they like :wink:

Anyway as soon as I can I will take pictures of the little ones and we'll see what we've got, interesting discussion thanks for sharing this Tammy.

[Emma1978]

My Husky male never sired any Husky babies either.

[Bunsey]

My Husky male never sired any Husky babies either.

if he was heterozygous for it, then that would mean only 25% of the litter would be "supposed" to be husky, and as I_N said, nature doesn't always read the maths book of probability :D If he kept breeding, eventually there might be a husky. Not that i'm recommending breeding thousands of robos btw. :lol:

[Ness]

Not that i'm recommending breeding thousands of robos btw. :lol:

oh why not? robo world domination! thats the way to life ;)

[NaomiR]

yey I agree that would be fabulous lets all get to it lol :wink:

my Spikelets are 6 days old now and they don't look very white faced to me, but I'll check again (properly) in a week or so when I can get a better look at them, some of them I only saw their little bums and cute as they are, doesn't really help us does it?!

[Emma1978]

My Husky male never sired any Husky babies either.

If he kept breeding, eventually there might be a husky. Not that i'm recommending breeding thousands of robos btw. :lol:
He's been dead for over a year so a little but difficult anyway lol

[NaomiR]

my husky x agouti robo babies are 2 weeks old now and not a white face in sight

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj59/naomirussell/hamster/th_bubs2weeksold1.jpg (http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj59/naomirussell/hamster/bubs2weeksold1.jpg)

[Tammy22]

Yes,

i have 6 babies at the moment who all have the same White - Faced Father, and none of them are White - Faced either :?

This Gene seems to very confusing, for me anyway :oops: , and i have been discussing it with a few people including ELC and Wessex Hamsters, and have found out that it may be a co - dominant gene, which i have never heard of before :?

Maybe it would be a good idea if whoever is breeding White - Faced Robos, or has done in the past, discussed their findings as much as possible, so we can try and find out as much as possible about this Gene

I would love to be able to find out exactly how this gene works - it is very interesting, but very annoying too!!

Kind Regards,

Tammy x

[arikata]

I had an accidental litter from a normal robo and a husky robo, they were brother and sister. However not one of my babies have white faces either :? I'm quite intrigued by this gene so keep us posted on any findings!x

[WE55EX HAMSTERY]

This may help explain my theory that I have about the White-Face gene being co-dominant:

An example of some co-dominant genes are the Agouti (A) and Tan (at) genes in mice. On their own the create the Golden Agouti (AA) http://www.nationalmouseclub.co.uk/image-aov-agouti.html and Tan (atat) http://www.nationalmouseclub.co.uk/image-tan-dove.html mice but when you cross them they make the modern Chinchilla mouse (Aat) http://www.nationalmouseclub.co.uk/image-aov-chin.html which is a chinchillated Agouti Tan (the chinchilla gene washes out the yellow in the tan turning it white and the yellow in the agouti leaving a ticked black and silver back) as they are both dominant genes on the same loci but they are equal in the dominance to one another.

Also because they are both co-dominant to one another there are normally random numbers of chinchilla, tan and agouti pups in the litter (really random, as you can go 4-5 litters from the same pair with out seeing any chinchillas and then get a full litter of them).

Does this help explain it some more?? I think that the key thing is that anyone that has a litter from an Agouti x White-Face or pure White-Face mating lets us know what was in the litter so we can understand the gene more.

[arikata]

In one reported case two agouti's mated, with the offspring being one Agouti pup and one white-faced with a diluted colour (look below) This is called a 'Recessive gene'.

taken from http://roborovskihamsters.webs.com/appearance.htm

There is quite a bit of info on the white gene on this site which is quite interesting.

There is a timeline which makes me wonder if some of my current robo litter are actually husky. They are too small to tell but 2 of them match the pictures of the babies!

[NaomiR]

could it possibly be as simpe as the fact that Agouti is dominant???

I know in mice and cavies (guinea pigs) it's dominent :?

Like Tammy I was hoping for 1 or 2 little white faces but never mind I have a cage full of cuties :D