NEWS103
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The ‘Coffee’ Platy is a pure white Platy with
black spotting. The ‘Ghost’ can be obtained
from it via selectivebreeding.
WhiteSwordtail
Lexicon
Swordtail
Xiphophorus:means“swordtail”.
hellerii: Inhonor of K.Heller,an
Austrianbotanist.
maculatus:means“spotted”.
Tricolor swordtail of the color form ‘Shiro-Utsuri’.
Pair of a lyretail form of the tricolor swordtail. Lyretails are bred by pairing normal-finnedmales and
lyretail females,as the lyretailmaleswith their greatlyenlargedgonopodiumaren’t capableofmating.
Themysterious‘Ghost’
The ‘Ghost’ Platy is the cultivated form of
the Platy from which originated the new
Swordtail crosses shownhere.
The snow-white ‘Ghost’ Platy is a fairly old
cultivated form. It was available to the
world-famous geneticist Myron GORDON
back in the 1940s, as the legendary
‘Bleeding Heart’ Platy originated from the
crossingof awild-formPlaty from theRio
Jamapa, the ‘Ruby Throat’, with the ‘Ghost’
(you can readmore about this inNews 59,
which,likeall issuesof theNews,isavailable
freeofchargeonthe InternetasaPDF fileat
/
news_pdfen/news59d.pdf).Unfortunately I
know nothing about the origins of the
‘Ghost’ Platy. But this much is known: the
‘Ghost’ is a mutant, that is the result of a
spontaneous geneticmutation.The ‘Ghost’
has long sincebeen regarded as extinct, at
least in central Europe, and nowadays
cannot be obtained in the international
aquatic trade.
But there isaPlaty (albeit likewise rare), the
‘Coffee’, which is apparently derived from
the ‘Ghost’, as occasional pure white
specimens – ie ‘Ghost’ Platies – regularly
occur among its offspring (the ‘Coffee’
normally breeds true), permitting the
breeding of a strain of these genetically
interesting fishes.
Thegeneticsof the‘Ghost’
In1983 a student ofMyronGORDON,Klaus
D.KALLMANN, alongwithValerieBRUNETTI,
published a work in which the genetics of
the ‘Gray’, ‘Gold’, and ‘Ghost’ mutants were
