GENETICS

Genes in gerbils, as with all animals come in pairs. The gerbil gets one of these genes from the father and the other one from the mother. For example: the agouti gene locus (where the gene is located on the chromisome) will be filled with one gene from the mother and one from the father, as will the other gene locuses.

Right now there are 6 known gerbil gene locus that control colour. For example the letter A stands for the gene responsible for making the animal agouti colour, and the letter a stands for the self or black gene that makes the animal black.

The capital A is dominant over the small a, which means if the small a is present it will only be shown in the colour if there is another small a. The dominant A will take over the small a and the animal is agouti.

This is maybe a better example. Having the A gene means that the animal has the agouti colour, while the a gene causes the black colour, but is only shown in the coar if there are 2 recessive a's. When there is an agouti animal it can either have the genes AA or Aa. Because you don't know for sure the second gene meaning that it could either be A or a then it is represented as a dash - .

Pink eyes are caused by the p gene. since the pink eyes gene is recessive you need 2 p's to have a pink eyed animal. Along with making the animals eyes pink it also lightens the coat colour and will alter the gerbils look resulting in a different variety.

There is an exception to the rule about dominance. When there are 2 p's in the genes it effects the animal's dominant C gene so that the gene c[h] does show up in the appearance of the animal. This will change the argente golden(A-CCpp) to argente cream(A-cc[h]pp) and the lilac(aaCCpp) to dove(aaCc[h]pp).

This effect is a modification of the genes which shows that genes have effect on each other as well as the coat colour.