I'm not sure if this has been covered before (probably?) but I couldn't find it anywhere...


Does anyone know of a site that explains Genetics in breeding? No, I'm NOT planning on breeding, I just want to understand it better.

Sorry if I'm missing an old post, don't mean to beat a dead horse!

What specifically do you want to know?

If you want to know about the basic laws of inheritance and Punnett squares this is a good site:
http://bowlingsite.mcf.com/Genetics/Genetics.html

Or you could just google "dog coat color inheritance". Coat color is a really good place to start, because even though I don't think it's usually important, the principles are identical to all other genetics, it's better understood on a genetic level than any other multi-gene traits I know of, and it is reasonably obvious in purebred dogs.

This is also a really good site because it describes current scientific knowledge and controversies about genes and has lots of pictures, but its really technical in many places:

http://homepage.usask.ca/~schmutz/dogcolors.html

If you want to know more about general breeding practices and techniques, most purebred dog books have a section on breeding, or some very experienced person may chime in.

Oh, and there are plenty of good sites that aren't about dogs at all. The principles are the same for all mammals, the individual genes may just be different.

Awesome! That definately helps, thanks! The thing that got my interest was the Malinos/Terv issue. I'm still trying to get my mind around it, lol. I know about the lethal merle gene in danes/aussies/etc. But I've just been looking into the different genetics of Malinois, and also want to check out color variations in GSD's.

Edit:
that link provides excellent information

 Quote: megan berry

Awesome! The thing that got my interest was the Malinos/Terv issue.

That's actually pretty easy to explain, and isn't a genetic issue but a political one. In Europe you have the Belgian Shepherd Dog, and it comes in varieties. Terv, Groen, Mal and Laken. Kind of like Labradors come in black, brown and yellow. Or GSD come in sable (of different colors), bi-color, long hair, regular coat, etc.

In BSDs the long hair is a simple recessive (the links provided explain those). So you can breed 2 short haired dogs (AKA Malinois) together, and if both carry the long haired recessive you can get long haired puppies (AKA Tervuren). In Europe they would be registered as BSD - variety Tervuren. And their short haired littermates would be BSD - variety Malinois.

The problem arises here in the US where for political reasons the Belgians were split into seperate breeds. As seperate breeds AKC can't accept that a long haired fawn dog out of two Malinois is a Tervuren, because they are "different breeds". So now you have "long haired Malinois" since AKC insists if the parents were Malinois, the offspring have to be. Or a fawn colored Groenendael, or a black Tervuren. And it will probably remain that way here in the US, at least with AKC, since the clubs don't want to recombine, issues with treasuries and that type of thing. UKC on the other hand does recognize them as one breed, with varieties, and registers them accordingly.

OK, I guess it's not that simple to understand :-)

 Quote:

This is also a really good site because it describes current scientific knowledge and controversies about genes and has lots of pictures, but its really technical in many places:

http://homepage.usask.ca/~schmutz/dogcolors.html

I was just going to post this link as a new topic, but thought to do a search first... sure enough, here it is!

Just bumping it, because it is such an informative and fascinating bit of info.