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Inheritance of the background shell color in the snails Littorina obtusata (Gastropoda, Littorinidae)

  • Animal Genetics
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Abstract

We investigated in a gastropod mollusk Littorina obtusata (L. obtusata) the inheritance of back-ground shell coloration of the shell, which arises on the basis of three pigments: purple, orange, and yellow. We found that the hypothesis on polyallelic inheritance, as in the genus Cepaea, cannot explain the inheritance of shell color in periwinkles. We demonstrated that a separate genetic system is responsible for incorporation of each pigment into the shell. The composition of these genetic systems includes at least two genes each in the case of the yellow and purple pigments. Our analysis shows that caution should be applied when extending the results obtained in the studies of the Cepaea genus to the other species of gastropods.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. White Sea Biological Station, Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia

    E. V. Kozminsky

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  1. E. V. Kozminsky
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Correspondence to E. V. Kozminsky.

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Original Russian Text © E.V. Kozminsky, 2014, published in Genetika, 2014, Vol. 50, No. 10, pp. 1177–1187.

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Kozminsky, E.V. Inheritance of the background shell color in the snails Littorina obtusata (Gastropoda, Littorinidae). Russ J Genet 50, 1038–1047 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1022795414100044

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1022795414100044

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