Yellow spots on Tigers

[muskyhunter]

Hey all,
I remember a few months ago one of you musky hunters on the Eastside caught a tiger and it had a yellow dot on its side/belly. Everyone including myself, had opinions on it. I couldn't find the post so I am bringing it up again. I was watching a Next Bite episode where Maina and his dad were fishing northerns up in Canada eh? Anyway, I noticed that all of or just about all of them (northerns) had the same yellow pigmented dots on those fish. I was thinking that it might just be from the cross breeding of the northerns and the muskies. Could be showing all of us how much northern genes are actually in these tigers. Not a theory or an ideology just an observation that I noticed and thought I'd share it. Anyways, now go catch some muskies ! See ya on the water, todd

[geljockey]

Don't confuse phenotype (way it looks) with genotype (the actual genetic makeup). Each parent contributes half of its genetic material to its offspring. What may be happening is something called dominance. So there could be a gene for yellow pigmentation in northern pike and in muskellunge. The gene will have two forms (alleles) it inherited, one from "mother" and one from the "father." A dominant allele is one which expresses what it codes for no matter what the allele expresses and a recessive allele will only express what it codes for if there is a recessive pair. All alleles come in pairs except on the XY chromosomes. For example I'll use eye color in humans. Brown (B) is dominant and blue (b)is recessive so...
BB = brown eyes
Bb = still brown eyes even though there is one blue allele
bb = this is the only combination where you can get blue eyes

To complicate things, other genes may have alleles that are co-dominant. But that is for another time. I just wanted to make the point that because a tiger muskie has some yellow dots on its side/belly, doesn't mean that it has more northern pike genes than muskellunge genes. But it could be due to the way the genes are inherited. Good observation.

[Mark K]

Don't confuse phenotype (way it looks) with genotype (the actual genetic makeup). Each parent contributes half of its genetic material to its offspring. What may be happening is something called dominance. So there could be a gene for yellow pigmentation in northern pike and in muskellunge. The gene will have two forms (alleles) it inherited, one from "mother" and one from the "father." A dominant allele is one which expresses what it codes for no matter what the allele expresses and a recessive allele will only express what it codes for if there is a recessive pair. All alleles come in pairs except on the XY chromosomes. For example I'll use eye color in humans. Brown (B) is dominant and blue (b)is recessive so...
BB = brown eyes
Bb = still brown eyes even though there is one blue allele
bb = this is the only combination where you can get blue eyes

To complicate things, other genes may have alleles that are co-dominant. But that is for another time. I just wanted to make the point that because a tiger muskie has some yellow dots on its side/belly, doesn't mean that it has more northern pike genes than muskellunge genes. But it could be due to the way the genes are inherited. Good observation.

[geljockey]

Don't confuse phenotype (way it looks) with genotype (the actual genetic makeup). Each parent contributes half of its genetic material to its offspring. What may be happening is something called dominance. So there could be a gene for yellow pigmentation in northern pike and in muskellunge. The gene will have two forms (alleles) it inherited, one from "mother" and one from the "father." A dominant allele is one which expresses what it codes for no matter what the allele expresses and a recessive allele will only express what it codes for if there is a recessive pair. All alleles come in pairs except on the XY chromosomes. For example I'll use eye color in humans. Brown (B) is dominant and blue (b)is recessive so...
BB = brown eyes
Bb = still brown eyes even though there is one blue allele
bb = this is the only combination where you can get blue eyes

To complicate things, other genes may have alleles that are co-dominant. But that is for another time. I just wanted to make the point that because a tiger muskie has some yellow dots on its side/belly, doesn't mean that it has more northern pike genes than muskellunge genes. But it could be due to the way the genes are inherited. Good observation.

The point I was trying to make was that the yellow spotting seen is not due to number of northern pike genes in the tiger muskie. The number of northern pike genes and the number of muskellunge genes in a tiger muskie are the same. It's due to the way the northern pike and muskellunge genes interact with one another, a genetic mutation, or it could be due to the environment. I guess I didn't do a good job of explaining. Hopefully this one is better.