Chimera Bristlenose Female

[neptunestide90]

Five inch female bristlenose plecostomus for sale. she is a chimera, half albino and half common coloration as seen in the pictures. She is pick up only for $1000 u.s.d. Or best offer, I am located in San Jose, California. you can either find me on facebook which should be on my profile or contact me directly here. I will not ship because there isn't another one of these on the planet and I don't want to risk it in shipping

[FishnFins]

Nice fish! I have to ask how did you come across it? Why aren't you line breeding it? Thanks, Ben

[Barbie]

Chimera, by definition are two embryos that have combined. It's hard to picture how that would work in plecos. The shells on the eggs harden all but immediately and development is just different. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it makes me wonder if there is another explanation. Either way, a true chimera is not something that it's likely to "throw" in offspring. Odds are good it's a really uncommon "sport".

Barbie

[Bas Pels]

A possible explanation for the observed pattern could be a problem with the nerves. Nerves giving signals to the skin signal either the left half or the right one - and if a nerve which ought to signal - keep it dark - is malfunctioning, this is precisely the pattern one would get.

I have seen this quite often with cichlids, which usually died shortly after developing the pattern, but never with catfish.

As Barbie wrote, a chimaera is an organism which contains parts of more than one embryo. good example is someone after having an organ transplanted - this organ is strange.

Obviously, the term chimaera is usually used for other organisms, which almost always come from laboratories, after quite expensive treatments - in a very early stadium of egg cell development, somewhere between 4 an 128 cell to be a bit more precisely.

I could not tell how to do such a thing to an Ancistrus, but I am quite certain it is impossible to happen overnight

[bekateen]

I realize the OP called this a chimera, but I'm not convinced that the OP intended the usage to imply that it is the result of a fusion of two embryos, versus simply an animal that shows two distinct body colorations which normally occur on separate individuals (which is a misusage of the word chimera, but the visual image it creates is accurate).

Therefore, while true chimerism might theoretically be occurring here, I don't think we should invoke such an extreme condition without more background knowledge. What I see when I look at the photos is something more like human piebaldism or human vitiligo. I realize that there are already BNs called piebald/calico and they don't resemble this at all, but I don't know enough about the genetics of piebald/calico BNs to comment further. As far as I know, in mammals, piebaldism and the calico condition are two very different phenomena, both of which are heritable. Vitiligo, by contrast, is not heritable (although it can have a genetic component to its causation).

Neptunestide90, did you raise this fish from an egg, or did you buy it partly grown? If bought, was it this color when you bought it, or did it acquire this color as it aged? (likewise if it was egg-hatched by you)

Cheers, Eric