Black, chocolate, & dilute, oh my!

The B locus and D locus are pretty straightfoward and fairly easy to understand, especially compared to both the C and E locii. Since neither are too complicated, I thought I'd go over both here instead of making separate pages for both.

Black & Chocolate

The B locus is responsible for chocolate rabbits. This color arises from modificiations of black pigment. This locus only has two genes, which are completely dominant and recessive.

   B - black
   b - chocolate

Black (BB, Bb)	Chocolate (bb)

These colors are caused by a modification in the pathways that creates black pigment, and therefore do not significantly affect red or yellow. When a rabbit is (bb), the black pigment is "diluted" to a brown color known as chocolate.

Dilution

The D locus is responisble for dilution. Dilution is a recessive trait that dilutes, or lightens, the color of the rabbit. In rabbits, it does affect both black and yellow pigments fairly equally. Like the B locus, there are only two genes in the locus.

   D - dense, full color
   d - dilution

Dilutions modifies all the self colors we've conversed for far into their dilution counterparts. Black become blue, chocolate becomes lilac, and orange becomes cream.

Black (DD, Dd)	Blue (dd)		Chocolate (DD, Dd)	Lilac (dd)

Orange (DD, Dd)	Cream (dd)