Posted by:
rtdunham
at Sat Sep 24 09:01:42 2011 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by rtdunham ]
>> I've seen bicolored albinos and hypos but no anerys or ghosts…
Hi Amy, Terry here. I just want to point out you're using "bicolored" in a different way than I'm accustomed to, so I thought it worthwhile to remind people there can be two different meanings:
First, as you're using it, to mean tangerines on which the colors of the wide (usually red) and narrow (usually white, cream, yellow, gold or orange) rings approximate each other, producing, on extra nice tangerines, specimens on which the two colors are the same. So only that color and the black rings (which might be gray on a hypo or white on an amel) remIn--thus two colors. Or bicolors.
The other meaning, which I'm more accustomed to and which I think was the original meaning (because it came into use when most hondos were tricolors and predates any regular availability of tangerines) describes hondos on which black pigment has suffused the narrow, colored rings over time. Gradually the black tipping increases until the two black rings and the ever-blacker ring between them merge into a single, wide black ring. So the third color becomes obscured by black resulting in a red and black (or gray or white on hypos and amels, respectively) thus a bicolor.
Hondo expert louis Porras speculates that dramatic darkening is more prevalent in tricolors which are the upland form (he found a shed at 6,000 feet) to facilitate thermoregulation. I believe linebreeding for the "cleanest" colors has resulted in less of that ontogenic darkening, though it's still a common and sometimes unwanted occurrence.
I'm sure you and most of the people here know all this but I put on my "definition man" hat for clarification. ( I tried for years to get the more accurate "Hypoerythristic" term used in place of the misnomer "anerythristic" for hondurans but finally gave up. You can't lead a marching band if no one's following.) 
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RE: ? about anery and ghost hondos - rtdunham, Sat Sep 24 09:01:42 2011
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