Deon posted this bird in the yahoo forum 1-2 years ago. It is a bird from a friend of him living in the north of SA if I remember correctly (otherwise Madas will correct me). He named it Violino as was suppossed to be a Violet (SF?, DF?) Blue Ino (SL-Ino?, NSL-Ino?).
As you can see bird's colour is not the expected albino but some kind of yellowish or bluish depending on angle, body region and pic.
Some posts ago we had speculated that there are, at least, two types of Violets : brigth Violets and "normal" Violets. We even speculated about the possibility of two different types or alleles of Violet.
Deon's pic show a bird with some degree of iridescence, and thus I suposse that it comes from a brigth Violet. This pic support the idea that Violet could be a structural mutation acting also in the feather cortex and thus being able to produce iridescence. Another alternative explanation would be that a mutation acting on feather structure could be highly linked to Violet, and so both could be transmitted together to the offspring as if they were a single gene. The brigth Violets would in fact be the "normal" Violets but they would be linked to such structural mutation.
Which could be such a structural mutation? Certainly not Emerald since the bird in the pic does not match the phenotype of an Emerino ... but Mike's results show that the expression of Emerald in Violet birds produces a darker Violet and not a greener bird. The addition of Emerald in the genetic make up would produce the brigthness and even a better coloured bird (darker). Could the bird in the pic be the expression of an allele of Emerald selected by SA breeders looking for better coloured birds?
Do not forget that at that time Emerald was not present in SA.
Of course I am speculating at the n degree since I am speaking of a possible allele of a mutation that still remains to show what it is .... but this speculation allows us to ask : has any breeder ever found that Emerald and Violet do not breed true? .... that is ... could they be linked? Has anybody ever observed a difference when breeding Emerald to brigth or to normal Violets?
Regards
Recio
