Pigmentation of sheep. II.The inheritance of colour patterns in black Merinos

Abstract

Within homozygous recessive Black Merinos (ww), in which pigmentation is due to a single recessive gene w, three patterns of pigmentation have been observed – Badger-face (BF), Reversed Badger-face (RBF), and Self-colour (SC). These are shown to be initiated by a series of alleles, wl, we, and ws respectively in decreasing order of dominance, which are allelic with W, the gene inhibiting pigmentation of the wool-growing area in the Merino.The dominance of wl over w2 and w3, and of w2 over w3, is not always complete. An "overlap" pattern is described with characteristics of two alleles and whose occurrence is sex-influenced.