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"White" common toad
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Mark_b View Drop Down
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    Posted: 13 Jun 2012 at 5:46pm
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GemmaJF View Drop Down
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We having a run on 'white' animals Wink Thanks for sharing Mark.
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tim hamlett View Drop Down
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very interesting...lovely looking animal

tim
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will View Drop Down
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nice! I wonder what the correct technical term for this colouration is - would it be amelanistic? 
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liamrussell View Drop Down
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Originally posted by will will wrote:

nice! I wonder what the correct technical term for this colouration is - would it be amelanistic? 

Isn't this an albino? It had pink eyes. Albinos only lack melanin so often appear a bit yellowish.

I found a huge albino toad a few years ago. Obviously no camera that dayDisapprove
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sussexecology View Drop Down
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Edited by sussexecology - 15 Jun 2012 at 8:30pm
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Caleb View Drop Down
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Originally posted by liamrussell liamrussell wrote:


Isn't this an albino? It had pink eyes. Albinos only lack melanin so often appear a bit yellowish.


It has no melanin (hence the pink eyes), so it is amelanistic. 'Albino' is a bit imprecise. The term was first used for mammals, where melanin is the only pigment. This means for mammals, albinism and amelanism are the same thing. In other animals, 'albino' is sometimes reserved for specimens with no pigment at all (which will appear white, like albino mammals), and sometimes used for specimens like this one, which clearly has pigments other than melanin.

There are some more pictures of 'albino' toads on the old forum (including two from me):
http://www.herpetofauna.org.uk/forum_archive/forum_posts.php?forum_id=15&Topic_ID=559&Subject=Albino%20toad%20pics&PN=1
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sussexecology View Drop Down
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Points: 411 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote sussexecology Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Jun 2012 at 8:34pm

I've edited out my colleagues previous comments so that this thread makes more sense. Albino is referred to a white animal - whether it is a mammal or amphibian, reptile etc, etc.
Amelanistic is a bit more posh way of saying it has no melarin.
In fact we are all referring to the same ecological term, whether it is albino or amelanistic.

Why are we getting so many white animals recorded at the moment, that is a question that i would like to ask.
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GemmaJF View Drop Down
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um because people like to post them up! Wink

As these conditions are controlled by recessive genes they are going to crop up in populations at some point. How it effects the individuals animals survivorbility in the wild is perhaps the big question. Interesting that we are seeing adult animals that are surviving in the last couple of threads.

I think the distinctions between albino, amelanistic, leucism etc are worth understanding but very often they are best understood by captive breeders who may select for these traits, so they understand the phenotypes in terms of exactly what the genes are doing. I certainly wouldn't get too hung up about any of it myself. To 99% of people a white animal is albino. I only pulled up Jon on the other thread because I was 100% sure it was not just a light coloured slow worm about to slough that had been posted up.
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