Ommatriton vittatus color variant

[caudataman]

Hi all,

Thought I'd share a couple photos of some interesting color variants I got with my O. vittatus this year. I refer to them as "the blondes". Larvae were very pale (will try to get a photo shortly) with jet black eyes. Here are a couple pics of the juveniles with a standard color for comparison... Not sure if they're leucistic or what, but they're interesting if nothing else...

 

[caudataman]

here is a normal colored juvie for comparison and a shot of the 2 together. Hard to get them to pose together as "the blonde" wouldn't sit still. Must've been a sale somewhere...

 

[Azhael]

Nice animals. Some of mine are even paler than that....i don´t think they are any variant at all....just normal coloration. Happens the same with other juveniles from other species, for example in helveticus juvies i´ve observed very pale juvies next to very dark ones...
What´s quite sure it´s that they are not leucistic...leucistics are usually white(eassy to confuse with albino), or a very pale creamy colour. Anyway those colours seem perfectly normal to me.
Check this ones, they are flavists but you can see how flavism/albinism/leucism changes the colour pattern significantly, and not just making it paler.
http://www.caudata.nl/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=98&topic=409.0

Of course i could be totally wrong. In that case i would be happy cause i´d have some of that variant too n_n.

 

[caudataman]

Hi Rodrigo,

Thanks for the compliments! You message bummed me out since I thought I had something a bit more special here, but I was very glad to see a photo of an actual white one and to see the Dutch Caudata site was neat too! I guess my "blondies" are just a color form, but the all black eyes still intrigue me. I did notice that the flavistic one DID have the gold eye markings that the standard color ones share. Very interesting indeed! Nonetheless, I am keeping the light colors separate and will try to pair them up at some point and see how the genetics work out...

Brian

 

[Azhael]

Great idea...it would be very interesting to see what the resultant offspring would be like. Who knows maybe they are carrying some hidden gens that may show in future generations.
Also i´ve noticed that mine have some capacity of colour changing...it may be induced by temps, or any other thing, but they can vary quite a bit. It would be interesting to see if yours show colour changes too. btw, what are you feeding them?? They look nice and healthy so you must be doing great with them. Any experience i can benefit from is well apreciated n_n
btw, not trying to destroy your hopes with the blonde ones, but maybe it´s something like shown in this link, the first photo shows two adult males, you can see the colour difference is quite big. It´s a pitty the eyes can´t be properly seen...

http://images.google.es/imgres?imgu...firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:es-ES:official&sa=N

 

[caudataman]

Wow Rodrigo - you are an amazing photo resource!!! Very interesting. If the light male in the first photo is the same as the 6th photo, then he does have a bit of the gold eye coloration that mine don't. The parents were normal colored, though I did lose the male after he left the water. Hopefully I will have a male in the few I'm keeping to be able to repeat my success. I haven't noticed a color change that didn't seem related to shedding.

As for feeding, I am using a very small chopped earthworm that I collected from under logs in the woods behind my house. I had orginally found them to feed my baby Echinotriton and started a worm colony. Now they (the worms) breed like mad and feed on household food scraps. I started a similar colony for nightcrawlers but they don't seem to reproduce like these "leaf worms". I chop them up with a razor and offer the segments on the ground in front of the babies. I also leave some chopped segments in a cup top for later feeding. I'll try and take some more photos of the containers and maybe some feeding shots soon...