"Pansy": A Plumage Color Mutant in Japanese Quail

Abstract

The plumage color mutant "pansy" was described in this paper. The pansy chick showed light yellow down with 3 narrow black stripes on the back. The adult mutant plumage was basically composed of 3 colors : rust, black and white. Black color was predominant in the head. The male had brown or heavy rust face, while the female showed wheat-straw colored face with black stipes. In the back feather, arrangement of color bands from the base to the tip was as follows : the gray base, mixture area of rust and black, large area of black, rust area and white tip. Its rachis color was white at the base and becomes dark toward the tip. Such pigmentation was obviously different from that of the redhead, although both mutants are similar to each other in external appearance. The breast was whitish rust in the male, in contrast, many small black speckles were present in the female. The belly was white. As for wing feathers, primaries and primary-coverts were predominantly black and the others were mostly diluted rust. The eyes were normal and the beak was blackish, while the legs and nails were pinkish white.
Genetic analyses clarified that the "pansy" plumage was controlled by an autosomal recessive gene. The gene symbol ps has been proposed.