The Turquoise Conundrum
While describing the mutations in visual terms is helpful - for the avid breeder, understanding the genetics is far more important. This is where you can determine how to pair your birds to produce desired offspring or how to determine your pairs' full genetics after breeding by evaluating the produced offspring.
I haven't found there to be a lot of 'lay' information on the internet that is easily understandable, and sometimes, the information I have found is downright wrong, so I decided to write up what I've determined over the course of breeding these little beauties myself.
Some of what I write is CONJECTURE based on my own experience and a lack of information/resource on the subject by verified sources. The main area where this information can be viewed as hypothesis or conjecture is with respect to the "Turquoise" Parrotlet mutation inheritance as well as the Pied mutation. This information is MY OWN and was not copied or produced with the assistance of anyone. If you feel that it is incorrect, I welcome you to communicate directly with me so that perhaps we can produce some decent educational material for other breeders to reference. That said - any effort to share this information as one's own without my express consent will be considered theft of intellectual property.
I haven't found there to be a lot of 'lay' information on the internet that is easily understandable, and sometimes, the information I have found is downright wrong, so I decided to write up what I've determined over the course of breeding these little beauties myself.
Some of what I write is CONJECTURE based on my own experience and a lack of information/resource on the subject by verified sources. The main area where this information can be viewed as hypothesis or conjecture is with respect to the "Turquoise" Parrotlet mutation inheritance as well as the Pied mutation. This information is MY OWN and was not copied or produced with the assistance of anyone. If you feel that it is incorrect, I welcome you to communicate directly with me so that perhaps we can produce some decent educational material for other breeders to reference. That said - any effort to share this information as one's own without my express consent will be considered theft of intellectual property.
On most websites I've seen the Turquoise gene described as "Incomplete Dominant" which is not accurate. "Incomplete Dominance" describes a scenario where two genes blend cohesively together to produce a single phenotype that is a combination/blending of the original two.
For instance, an example of Incomplete Dominance would be crossing visually red pea plants with visually white pea plants and producing all visually pink pea plants as a result. Incomplete Dominance is permanent - meaning, anytime those two genes are crossed, the incomplete form will always be produced. In other words - pairing a red to a white plant will always only produce pink plants.
Therefore - if Turquoise was "Incomplete Dominant", the resultant Turquoise offspring would be the only possible offspring produced, and the only logical explanation of this would be that Turquoise is a result of Green + Blue. However, anyone who has paired a Green to a Blue knows this to be false. I have also produced both genetically blue, green and turquoise birds from a genetically Turquoise and genetically "green" bird. I try to explain my hypothesis on this below.
For instance, an example of Incomplete Dominance would be crossing visually red pea plants with visually white pea plants and producing all visually pink pea plants as a result. Incomplete Dominance is permanent - meaning, anytime those two genes are crossed, the incomplete form will always be produced. In other words - pairing a red to a white plant will always only produce pink plants.
Therefore - if Turquoise was "Incomplete Dominant", the resultant Turquoise offspring would be the only possible offspring produced, and the only logical explanation of this would be that Turquoise is a result of Green + Blue. However, anyone who has paired a Green to a Blue knows this to be false. I have also produced both genetically blue, green and turquoise birds from a genetically Turquoise and genetically "green" bird. I try to explain my hypothesis on this below.
Possible Green Genotypes
I believe Turquoise to be a 'modifier' to the blue mutation. Turquoise birds will only exist where a bird is genetically blue and also possesses at least one copy of this modifying gene.
Possible Blue & Turquoise Genotypes
It's important to note here that the 't' vs 'T' notation is simply to indicate whether the Turquoise modifier is activated within the genetics of the bird. It doesn't relate to anything in so far as recessive or dominant. Think of the capital 'T' as the modifying gene being switched 'on,' while the lower case 't' indicates that it's switched 'off.'
Possible American Genotypes
When you bring the American mutation into the equation, you're introducing another mutation to the mix - so it looks a little confusing, but hang in there!
Test Pairings
Putting the above into practice with some examples below from my own breeding and resultant offspring.
American Yellow Female x American Turquoise Male
Offspring produced include American Yellow, American White and American Turquoise
Offspring produced include American Yellow, American White and American Turquoise
Blue Pied Female x Turquoise Male
Offspring produced include Blue Pied, Blue, and Turquoise. I am going to ignore the Pied aspect of the female for this illustration as it’s irrelevant to the Turquoise genetics.
Offspring produced include Blue Pied, Blue, and Turquoise. I am going to ignore the Pied aspect of the female for this illustration as it’s irrelevant to the Turquoise genetics.
What's important here is the idea that this male cannot carry two copies of the Turquoise modifier. Why? Because if he did, we'd only see Turquoise offspring from this pair, and they produced both Blue and Turquoise offspring.
Turquoise Female (Offspring from the Blue Pied Female x Turquoise Male pair above) x Green Pied/Blue Male
Offspring produced Green, Blue and Turquoise. Again, I am going to ignore the Pied aspect of the male for this illustration as it’s irrelevant to the Turquoise genetics.
Offspring produced Green, Blue and Turquoise. Again, I am going to ignore the Pied aspect of the male for this illustration as it’s irrelevant to the Turquoise genetics.
The ideal next step would be to pair the blue offspring from the above pair, to a blue offspring produced from a similar pairing, and see if any Turquoise offspring result. Basically - can you produce a Turquoise baby from two visually blue birds. My theory is no - and I don't know that I have ever seen anyone who has. But again, more test breeding has to take place first, and this is obviously a lengthy process making sure that genetics of birds involved are known or understood and there are no potential surprises.
Turquoise Female x Turquoise Male
Offspring produced included Turquoise and one Blue Female. This was a pair bred by someone else who provided these results in the offspring.
Offspring produced included Turquoise and one Blue Female. This was a pair bred by someone else who provided these results in the offspring.
As I work with additional pairs and test breedings I will reevaluate and update accordingly. Additionally, if you're willing to share some breeding experiences of your own (I'm especially interested to know if anyone has produced visually turquoise birds from visually green or visually blue birds before) and wish to contribute, I'm happy to add you as a contributor to the information on this page.
I would also like to note that when it comes to extrapolating the above onto other mutations that exist, everything operates the same way, you'd just be attaching the additional alleles for the additional mutations onto the genotype of the bird.