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Himalayan rabbits having black fur where their skin is cold and white fur where it's warm is a useful and obvious example of this.
by knicholes 1y ago
Himalayan rabbits having black fur where their skin is cold and white fur where it's warm is a useful and obvious example of this.
- Earw0rm 1y agoAre the imprinted patterns then inherited, though?
- knicholes 1y agoNo. Sounds like I was wrong earlier.
- duskwuff 1y agoThat's a separate effect, known as acromelanism, or "point coloration". It's the result of an enzyme which is inactivated by higher temperatures, not a genetic change - the extent of pointing can change over an animal's lifetime, and the specific pattern isn't inherited. (For instance, if you somehow convinced a cat with color pointing to wear a sweater, its fur would stay light under that sweater, but any offspring it had would not inherit that pattern.)
- malfist 1y agoA better example might be how some animals (turtles in particular) have their sex defined by their egg temperature
- duskwuff 1y agoThat isn't a genetic change either, though. Those species of turtle either lack the typical sex-determining chromosomes entirely, or have sex-determining chromosomes which can be inactivated during development. The genotype doesn't change as a result of what temperature the egg is incubated at; its expression does. Further reading: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210726102148.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210726102148.h...
- malfist 1y agoThat's exactly the point. Gene expression can be modified by the environment