The Ember gene eEm.
Ember ( eEm) . is not a poor example nor a weak expression of recessive red ( e//e ). Dr. Willard F. Hollander studied the Ember gene and found it to be a new mutation. He was able to demonstrate that this mutation is an allele for the recessive red gene. This means that both recessive red and the ember genes share the same locus position on their assigned autosome chromosome. It also means that there are now three known allele possibilities for this locus. They are, non recessive red or wild type (+), recessive red (e) and Ember (eEm) Both recessive red and ember are classified as recessive genes with ember being the more dominant of the two.
Ember differs from recessive red in that in it’s Juvenal molt it normally appears to be a normal looking recessive red. As it molts into its adult plumage it becomes a very weak form of recessive red with a glowing ember look. Some loose their red look almost completely while others retain a portion. Normally the wing feathers retain a glowing red color giving it the look of hot embers, thus the name. Bar pattern birds tend to retain less of the red color than do checkers or dark check birds. My experience is the more coarse spread pattern, the more red ember color remains. This may or may not always be true but thus far mine have been that way.
A poor recessive red or even an un-improved expression of recessive red remains what it is during both its juvenile and adult molts. They will not make a transformation from recessive red to un-improved. However should a bird be heterozygous for both un-improved and ember then it naturally would start as an un-improved and molt into ember in just the same fashion as a normal recessive red / ember would.
I'm privileged to have three Embers in my loft directly from Dr. Hollander. They were given to me by Larry Long. Larry is the pigeon flyer that first spotted Embers in a flock of wild pigeons. He knew they were something different so he captured some to test. He breed them but was not able to pin down exactly what it was so he turned some over to both Dr. Paul Gibson and Dr. Willard F. Hollander for there independent genetic studies. What follows is a short note I received from Larry which I will share with you.
Ronald R Huntley
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Hi Ron,
Thanks for explaining about Ember. Doc called me this week and is still
excited about Ember; he says it's the hardest project he ever took on. Yes, I did trap the first Ember and Doc wants me to tell that part of the story. What
a lot of people don't realize is I bred out of the original feral and as I told Doc "didn't understand what I thought I knew" I had never heard of an allele for
recessive red and didn't suspect that's what it was. I was into homers heavy back then and even made a test mating to a recessive red homer. It was only after I felt it was different and worthy of taking to Doc that I brought him the feral. When it finally died Doc dried the wing.
He didn't want to take on any new projects because of his age but I
talked him into crossing it on recessive red and trying it. When the babies came out recessive red he put them in his cull pen and forgot about them until
he saw some bronzy looking odd balls that he didn't remember putting in the pen. When he checked his records they were the Ember crosses. He had almost
gave up on the project so a little luck was involved. The key is they come out
of the nest recessive red then try to revert or change back to wild type. One
of my first questions was what about brown and ash red based Embers?
I believe it's kept him young and his 90th birthday is April 15th, Tax
Day! This happens to be my mother's birthday too. Another strange coincidence
is that October 23 is his son Paul's and my birthday! If nothing else Embers
have gotten people looking at recessive red, unimproved recessive red (I don't
like that term), and stuff related to recessive red a little closer. No, the
genetic symbols aren't right and it bothers Doc but what can he do? I don't
believe the story is complete yet on Embers and there is more to learn and new
combinations to try. I believe it's going to lead to some beautiful color in
pigeons. I'm happy that people like yourself has taken on this project with us.
Good Luck,
Larry Long
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Well after a few years of breeding tests and study by Dr. Hollander, Larry now has some of his questions answered. He and Dr. Hollander were to publish their findings on this mutation but unfortunately Dr. Hollander passed away before his report was publication. It now falls on Larry to complete the review of Doc’s original draft report and to then publish his findings. Originally Dr. Hollander assigned the symbol eE; however, for clarity this was changed to eEm as selected by Dr. Gibson. Today Ember is classified as a new mutation and not a form of poor recessive red. It shares the same locus as recessive red and therefore is an allele to it. Since E denotes the wild type allele it should not be used to denote ember. Ember is recessive to the dominant wild type or normal gene found at this locus while at the same time it is dominant over recessive red it's other recessive allele. Following the prescribed rules for genetic symbols we thus assigned a superscript Em to the lower case e to denote its more dominant, yet recessive condition. In short, the correct genetic symbol for Ember is eEm.
In the attached pics, note the difference in shades of blue between the typical blue bar on the left and the Ember blue bar on the right. Also, notice that the ember glow is retained in the course spread pattern markings. This means that the darker the pattern or the more pattern there is, the more ember color will be retained in the color transformation from recessive red to ember.
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Normal blue bar / Ember blue bar 252 E
Ember blue bar 252 E Ember blue bar wing shield 252 E
The ember blue bar above left his nest to began life as normal looking recessive reds. He looked nothing like he does today. He has transformed through the molt from his juvenile Recessive Red phenotype to his adult Ember phenotype. This transformation from Recessive Red into something else, is what makes Ember unique. There will be other phenotypes as breeders of color, combine this gene with other color mutations, to produce some very striking birds.
