Foot colour is eumelanin skin pigmentation. It is related to eumelanin production and distribution/location. Polygenetic inheritance - depends on genes affecting eumelanin production and distribution.

 

Eumelanin can be black, brown, grey or not present - giving dark blue, brown, grey or pink feet, depending on variety of bird, what colour of eumelanin it produces if any, and how it is distributed in the skin, and whether it is located in the feet.

 

Albinism, Dilution, Leucism, Melanism - groups of genetic mutations affecting eumelanin production and distribution

 

The albino bird owes its pink feet, white feathers and red eyes to the gene that causes albinism - complete reduction of eumelanin in skin, eyes, feathers, allowing the appearance of pink, white and red. The red and pink colouration is the haemoglobin pigment of the blood showing through the skin, eye and feathershaft.

 

Eumelanin may be produced in skin but not in feathers (just as you see blonde humans with olive skin, or vice-a-versa fair skins with black hair). Can be unevenly distributed/located pigmentation as in pieds.

Ah. Polygenetic inheritance is never as much fun.

Interesting to note though, that of my two cinnamon girls (cinnamon being a colour that removes black eumelanin), one has pink feet, the other has grey feet.

I do notice that my blue footed boys do not have any dilution to their body colour, yet one of them is a full body-colour grey wing (yet he is a cobalt, but a very light one, so maybe he is just a grey wing).

So maybe we could map which genes these foot colours are linked to.

Just in my bunch of budgies it does not seem to adhere to any particular colour and seeing as I have hardly any dilution genes in my flock yet still have pink feet.

Also the interesting fact is I have 3 full body colour grey wings. One has blue feet, one has pink feet and one has grey feet.

Your dark factors affect the structure of feather proteins and eumelanin production and distribution within feathers, they may also do the same with the the structure of skin and eumelanin within it. Do your cinnamons (brown eumelanin) have other different contributing genetics influencing foot colour, say for example one is a spangle and the other is normal, or one is a sky blue and the other is cobalt?

Well the pink footed cinnamon is a visual violet, YF2 cinnamon opaline spangle

The grey footed cinnamon is a cobalt YF2 cinnamon spangle.

 

The only difference between the two is that one has opaline and violet and the other does not.

 

By the way I can see your pictures now Jimmy

Edited December 20, 200816 yr by Sailorwolf

By the way I can see your pictures now Jimmy

Wonderful news, I am glad they saw fit to allow my pictures... stupid firewall... I wonder if I have a defamation case against the firewall company... must see my lawyer

Edited December 20, 200816 yr by JimmyBanks

Your dark factors affect the structure of feather proteins and eumelanin production and distribution within feathers, they may also do the same with the the structure of skin and eumelanin within it.

 

The Dark Factor alters the structual colour of the feather by changing the depth of the cloudy layer in the medulla immediately under the cortex. Proteins and eumelanin production and distribution are not alter in anyway.

DNA codes for proteins etc to produce components of cells.

Feathers are made of keratin protein and skin contains collagen protein. Enzymes that produce these proteins are proteins themselves. Of course the dark factor makes structural changes to how these proteins are organised. That's what changes the depth of the cloudy layer. The structural changes require reorganisation and redistribution of pigments by default.

Depends on what articles you read.

Opaline causes redistribution of pigments on the back v, may also do this in feet. Would be interesting to find out. Anyone got an electron microscope handy?

Scanning or transmission?

Really? You have access to both!

 

Transmission for a look through samples to see where pigments are located.

Scanning for a 3D representation of larger structures like the whole feather.

 

Are there any published scientific works and images already on this topic?

You could research it online and in libraries to look for anything related to this topic, and find out what others have discovered already to save repeating it.

 

If not, you could do a PHD on inheritance and pigmentation of feet in budgies.

You could actually discover for yourself!!!

 

The quest for deciphering blue footed budgies may lead you on to pioneer other great scientific discoveries and develop your own theories and be hailed as a great scientific mind of our time.

See comments in thread on Purdue/Mendel.

 

Mostly these days though, unfortunately there will need to be some kind of commercial benefit and application of this research to get funding for it to cover your salary and the cost of the experiment. It might have to be something that you do in your spare time with permission to access already available resources whilst working on a more financially lucrative research project.

 

You could prepare comparable samples of feathers, and skin scales from the budgies feet (without hurting them of course) and have a look to see if there is a structural difference between the two birds and a difference in the pigmentation within the structure.

 

What we see as colour is affected by our perception of the reflection and refraction of particular wavelengths of light - previously talked about this in thread on red budgies. Light transmission is affected by structure and pigmentation. These statements are assumptions based on my limited knowledge (gained by reading the works of others) of radiation physics of course.

 

To determine inheritance you would need to design a controlled breeding experiment with your birds to eliminate too many variables. You will also need to think about keeping siblings as back up in case your subject dies. (Though, if this occurs, you could have a very good look at specimens from a carcass.)

 

If you want to do something like this you will need to research as much about budgie genetics, feathers, inheritance, DNA transcription, function of genes etc that you can to learn from beforehand, ground your knowledge of basic sciences behind it and formulate your topic from there. You might even decide on a different topic as you research everything if something else grabs your interest.

 

I figure if you are going to pay for your own education and make a living it might as well be something that you are obsessed with and enjoy it. Turn your hobby into your career.

 

Have you decided what sort of work you are going to do yet, and what you are going to use your education for?

 

I find it really difficult to focus on any one thing personally because I can be interested in so many things and I keep changing my mind all the time. Hence, it is a bit of a scramble, but there are lots of ideas there usually for other people to investigate.

 

Have fun.

Well effectively it could be worth investigating as we would develop a higher understanding of genetics and polygenic inheritance. Which could further help genetic diseases.

 

Unfortunately I am in the wrong field to do this. I've gone the medical route rather than the genetic route, I find genetics interesting, but medicine moreso.

Yeah. I'm a dentist. Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong field too!

[ my goodness and her i was going to stick some photos on for you of my blue feet birds feet lol man am i to late

very interesting stuff although i will need to read it 20 times for any of it to sink in i cant even say half the words you guys used lol

I'll still look at them GB!

Yep, go ahead and post them GB.

okay i will try :rofl:

 

pink rececive pie

 

grey wing (i think) blue feet

 

dilute grey badly marked opaline spangle :rofl: grey feet

 

grey blue feet on a god knows what a budgie

:laughter:

purpley grey bluey feet on two normal vishual violet cobolts

 

blue purple feet on my yft2 colbolt vishual violet spangle boy

 

blue grey feet on cin wing vishual violet sky boy (he is very violet purple in life 0

 

grey blue feet on these two what ever color and viriarty they are

i have others but thats it thats me :question:

 

Thanks GB.

I seems that pink feet seem to stick with the more recessive mutations.

does seem that way although i have dom pies with grey blue feet go figure

i thought they were ment to have pink feet ?

Dom pies are not recessive hence the name Dominant pied.

Dom pies are not recessive hence the name Dominant pied.

yes i know these ones im talking are not rececive rececive i know very well breed them always

doms clearflights no clue

grey feet on doms im told no but im telling you yes not rececive they are something else

GB, what I mean is that the gene that creates dominant pieds is not recessive.

When I am talking about recessive and dominant genes, I am not talking about pieds at all.

A recessive gene is a gene that will only ever show if there are two of them. Recessive genes are recessive to dominant genes.

A dominant gene is a gene that will always show no matter what.

Dominant genes in budgies are: Yellow base colour, Normal wing markings, Clearflight pieds, Dominant pieds, Dutch Pieds, Yellowface.

Recessive genes in budgies are: Dilute, full body colour grey wing, grey wing, clearwing, anthracite, recessive pied (aka danish pied), saddleback, fallow and black face.

Sexlinked genes (which are recessive genes on the X chromosome) in budgies are: Cinnamon, opaline, ino, Texas clearbody and slate.

Codominant genes in budgies are: Spangle, dark factor, violet factor, grey factor.

 

Thus getting back to the main point. Dominant pieds are named so because the gene works in a dominant way. A bird carrying a dominant pied gene will always show dominant pied.

A recessive pied bird is named so because the gene acts recessively. A bird needs to have 2 recessive pied genes to show recessive pied.

 

Thus in my statement where I said that it seems that recessive mutations seem to have pink feet, I did not mean dominant pieds, because a dominant pied is not a recessive gene, thus in my hypothesis Dominant pieds should have dark blue/grey feet.

 

Clearflight pied is a dominant gene, so according to my hypothesis they should have grey/blue feet most of the time.