HARLEQUIN PATTERN & COLOR: WHY "fawnikins" ARE HERE TO STAY

HARLEQUIN PATTERN and COLOR:

WHY "fawnikins" ARE HERE TO STAY

An Explanation of the variety of mismarks found in harlequin breedings.

Harlequin coloration and pattern is dominant* to ALL other colors and patterns, both accepted and rejected, in the Great Dane breed. Therefore a harlequin can carry, sight unseen, any and all colors and patterns, and can produce anything from a "blue boston" to a fawn porcelaine/"fawnikin," when bred to another harlequin who is also carrying for the same sorts of mismarks.

Harlequin color (black) is inherited seperately from harlequin patterning. This is obvious as Mantles, black dogs with a blanket pattern, not harlequin torn patches, are routinely born to harl parents. The mantle or blanket pattern, just like the harlequin pattern, can be inherited seperately from the pigment color. The harl pattern without the harl black pigment is traditionally called Porcelain. (Porcelains can be merle, blue, fawn, brindle, or even odder colors. Americans call them "fawnikins," "merlikins," depending on their pigment shade, but they are all Porcelains, both genetically # and traditionally.) The mantle pattern, which Americans called "boston," can be found in any color traditional to the breed, as it is simply a recessive form of white spotting, separate from the harlequin white (a dominant gene complex). This separate inheritance for color and pattern means you can have blue "mantles" (boston patterned dogs), brindle "harlequins" (porcelains with brindle color); so from "fawnikin" to even "chocolate boston," harlequins can produce an array of colors not seen in other Dane litters; most of them disqualifying, of course. (You can also have pinto or piebald dogs who are white with black-or other coloured spots--who did not inherit the harlequin pattern, but if black, inherited harlequin pigment. For more info on the piebald or recessive spotted Dane, read the "Piebald Danes."

In the history of the breed it is a rather recent event that harlequins have been separated out from the other colors and their breeding restricted to only harls and mantles. So most harlequins do carry for fawn/brindle and/or blue. Anytime you breed two harlequins together who both carry for fawn, for example, you can expect (statistically) one in four of the pups in the litter to be fawn, fawn boston, or fawnikin, depending on what pattern, along with the fawn pigment, they inherit from their sire and dam. This is actually an inescapable part of harlequin breeding. (This applies as well to Mantle to Mantle breedings, who can produce all colors and all patterns BUT the harl/merle/porcelain dominant variant.) Harl family breedings always produce mismarks; merles are the most common, but multiple other mismarks are well documented and most pedigrees are unmarked as to carriers, so their appearance is often a surprise. "Color pure" pedigrees really do not matter much to this phenomenon. There are many documented cases of harls bred "pure" for many, many generations who suddenly produced blues or fawnkins in their litters. The fact that, for generations, color discrimination was not much of a factor in Dane breeding, combined with the fact that harlequin pattern and color is dominant to all other colors and patterns in the Great Dane, means that harls carry "sight unseen" for the other allowed, and even now rejected, colors and patterns (from chocolate to piebald) traditionally seen in the breed. A further recognized phenomenon in a genetic population, that, the rarer a trait becomes, the harder it is to completely eradicate, means that these odd colors and patterns will likely always be with us and will "pop up" from time to time in our litters.

Marking pedigrees is the only way** to help lessen the surprise, as you cannot produce any of these recessive colors/patterns unless BOTH parents are carriers for that color/pattern. So if you get "fawnikins" or blue piebalds, then simply note on the pedigree that the parents both carry for this color/pattern. If you want to avoid the further production of such mismarks, do not breed the two dogs who produced them to each other. But, know, that both of them are still passing along to their offspring the same recessive colors and patterns that they have produced and therefore their offspring can produce the same in the future. That is they are all "carriers." That is why, for 10, 20, 30, even 50 generations, the blue or fawn was carried, sight unseen, then "suddenly" shows up in a "color pure" pedigree--nobody marked the pedigree and nobody culled out the carriers, so the recessive genes just continue to be passed on unknowingly.

Mismarks are part of harlequin breeding and harlequin litters. We all are accustomed to seeing merle and black and white (boston-type) mismarks on a routine basis. Whites, and even piebalds (including "white body/color headed" dogs with "boston" heads and no body markings), are not that uncommon either. Brindle, blue and fawn bostons, as well as harlequin-marked but other than black (i.e. porcelain) pups are a less common occurrence, but still part of the harlequin legacy and are here to stay, "color-pure" pedigrees or not. (Fortunately with the AKC Limited Registration program a reliable option now exists to make certain these mismarked, but otherwise charming pups are not bred.) It is important that we document in which way our harls are carriers of recessive genes: hiding this information away is counterproductive. To minimize the expression of undesirable color genes, less than superior bloodstock of potential carrier status should be culled (removed, not killed) from breeding programs, and all pedigrees should be carefully marked so that carriers can be identified. There will then be few (if any) surprises when two carriers are bred to each other, plus the expression of disqualifying mismarks can be reduced by not breeding two carriers together when other options exist, (as they normally do).

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE:

The historical series in the GDR by Jill Evans documents the variety of recessive colors carried by harlequin bloodlines, plus she has a wonderful article to explain basic Great Dane coat color genetics available at the GDR website: www.gdr.com/past/strip.html

More articles on coat color genetics and the harlequin family variants are available at the CHROMADANE website.

* This term is used loosely and generically as used by the layman, to mean the expression of this phenotype can carry various unexpressed alleles, not in the strict sense of a series of alleles at a given locus.

** Test breeding (using a blue dog, for example to test for a blue carrier harlequin) seems a bit extreme for something as innocuous as mismarking, and the rejection of an otherwise superior harl who is a fawn carrier also seems too extreme a measure (given the dog in question really is a quality specimen) in a gene pool as restricted as that of the harlequin family of Danes.

#Merlikins, at least some of them, may be tweed variant merles (hhMMtwtw), so no carry the H=harlequin gene(s).

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