Surprise (somewhat) harlie genes

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LPH_NY

LPH_NY

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Can someone help me understand how the harlie gene "hides?" I have a doe that just had a litter 20 days ago. This doe had a dad that showed sparse harlie marks (which he got from a magpie daddy.) The doe from that litter and her littermates were visually clean. She's a squirrel and as far as I can tell, doesn't have a single odd marking. I bred her to a Champagne buck and 6 out of 7 resulting kits (all chestnuts, as expected) are sporting obvious harlie marks. Only 2 have noticeable marks on the face, but all 6 of the marked ones have massive gray/black splotches on the chest/belly and most of them have odd marked legs/feet.

How exactly did this gene "hide" on my squirrel doe? Her daddy was a chocolate chinchilla... I just assumed that since she was clean, she didn't inherit his harlie gene. I'm obviously wrong, lol.

16406418_1821978151389662_4377936857386334220_n.jpg


That's "Smudge" - the most visibly marked of the kits.
 
I am not the most experienced, but based on my recent research, I would expect an Agouti to maybe show some darkening in the "Agouti marked" areas, like belly, chin, etc. She had nothing at all, huh? What a twist! I'm under the impression that the degree of marking is random, so if she was really lightly marked (I have one kit with just a smidge of black in the armpit- but still a harli) and her minimal markings didn't fall on top of her cream agouti marks, could it have been overlooked?

I have some photos of how it "hides" in a tan. I quoted hides because in retrospect, this should have been quite obvious. I am just new enough to rabbits that I didn't clue in until her kits came out "weird"

She has some pretty blatant black smudging under her jaw.
3QbPLXE.jpg


And on her belly.
1GmzbEQ.jpg


So for some reason I was shocked when half her kits turned out like this:
mpLxseJ.jpg
 
I've had kits born that had to be eje (Esej dam and Ee sire) and as far as I could tell, they had no harlequin markings at all. A few times I got lightly marked kits from the same cross but more often than not you couldn't tell they were genetically harlequin.

It is my theory (so take it with a grain of salt) that some of the modifiers for black affect harlequin and tri expression. So, my theory goes, very clear reds will not have good harlequin offspring, while "smutty" reds will. This would also explain why harlequinized chestnuts are more common in Rex because their castors are so dark so the harlequin shows up better. I'd love to hear feed back on that
:D

It's also been theorized that ejej rabbits have stronger markings than eje rabbits. That makes sense to me since ejej rabbits will not be torted even if they are aa but I don't have enough breeding experience on that front to decide.
 
A Harlequinized squirrel would have very suble brindling, especially if her sire was minimally marked

As stated, there are other modifiers at work that increase or decrease the brindling pattern.

I've got a lightly marked magpie mutt who is "eje" and her kits rarely look harlequized, while this guy who is also "eje" throws kits that are nearly black and with very little orange or white areas
 

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