Tang Hybrids

[Mike612]

The Gold Rim Tang is known to crossbreed with both the Powder Blue Tang and the Achilles Tang. When it hybridizes with the Powder Blue Tang, the resulting hybrid seems to inherit more of the Powder Blue's traits, especially in appearance. When the Gold Rim breeds with the Achilles Tang, the Gold Rim's genes dominate the hybrid fish. Why does one dominate over the other? Is it a gender thing? Is it just natural biology (i.e. like saying that when a man with brown eyes does it with a woman with blue eyes, the resulting baby has brown eyes because the brown eye pigment is dominant over the blue eye pigment)? Any other reasons?

Next question relates only to the Achilles Tang. Lately, the collected Achilles specimens have had much smaller orange circles near their tail than they usually do. Does the hybridization have anything to do with it or are they simply evolving to camouflage themselves better to avoid predators?

 

[jandree22]

The Good Lord blessed all living creatures with dominant genes so we could all evolve into some kick ass creatures.

And if anything I'd lean to the former suggestion in your 2nd point... when you say "Lately" to the effect of the past decade or so, it's like barely a molecule of water in the bucket on the evolutionary scale (you know, like not even a drop in the bucket?). Okay nevermind, I'll just shut up now.

 

[Len]

I'm not geneticist, so I don't know about the first question. I'd also suspect some fish possess more dominant traits then others.

As for the second question, my guess is the Achilles being collected these days are from a different location. There is a lot of variance between locations.

Jandree, your kid's hand is getting attacked by a trigger!

 

[Mike612]

Where else would an Achilles Tang be collected? I thought they were Hawaiian endemics.

I'm kind of curious to know also if these dominant genes indicate a timeline for the tangs. If the Powder Blue Tang's genes are dominant over the Gold Rim Tang's, does that mean that the Gold Rim species has been around longer than the Powder Blue?

 

[Anonymous]

They're seen in many other locations. For instance, LOTS of Achilles in Guam (an island in the Micronesian chain).

 

[Mike612]

Alright you learn something new everyday.

 

[jandree22]

I'm kind of curious to know also if these dominant genes indicate a timeline for the tangs. If the Powder Blue Tang's genes are dominant over the Gold Rim Tang's, does that mean that the Gold Rim species has been around longer than the Powder Blue?

I see how you can extrapolate that, but that's not a clear way to tell. By making a hybrid of two species, you're mating apples to oranges. Before you went against nature to mate apples to oranges, apples mated only to apples, and oranges mated only to oranges. Therefore only the strongest apple genes made their way to the top of the list for apples, and ditto with oranges.

Now, when you take happy little apples and happy little oranges off their happy little path and mix it up, there's no telling what genes of the apples are stronger than the oranges, or vise versa.

All that being said, apples could've originated a million years ago, and oranges could've originated 5 years ago. But that doesn't make a difference when they came around because there were separate entities all together until a crazy breeder decided to mix it up.

Probably butchered up that explanation of my logic :lol:

 

[Mike612]

Shux, I thought I was on to something . Genetics was never one of my strong points in bio so I was just curious about this. Thanks for the answers everybody!

 

[jandree22]

lol, don't sell yourself short. I'm no bio wiz... I eeked through it, wasn't my forte unfortunately. You do have a very valid train of thought about it... genetics are just screwy to attempt tracing back for understanding.

 

[Mike612]

Haha thanks Jandree. Well this is something I've been thinking about since last night so it's really been bugging me. It's definately an interesting idea so it's worth looking into.
For all of you here, I shotgun being the investigator!