[luke frisbee]

These thoughts are not to be assumed to be correct...if you do decide to discuss the concept with friends be sure to preface that this is just my thoughts.

First consider that the sex of loggerhead sea turtles is determined while in the egg. the temperature of the egg determines the gender. The further up the beach, away from the cooling effects of the water or perhaps the dune vegetation and therefore Down the beach the eggs are laid will therefore determine the gender of those eggs. and the health of the Female sea turtle is thought to determine how far up the beach she will crawl before turning around and depositing her eggs. the general health of the loggerhead females will decide the ratio of males/females....
So let's consider this in relation to koi...


I believe it was brett Rowley that nce said over on Koivet three years ago that even if a GC was cloned that the pattern would be different than that of the GC. i guess it had been done as brett is one of a very few that i trust to speak from a scientific basis. He was wrong...once, but that was about koi eating koi. I've never caught him in a half-truth either before or after.
So what would make genetically identical animals different? And I mean really different. THIS IS NOT FACT JUST WHAT I THINK.............
1. Each adult koi can throw 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands of spawn each year...Species survival is dependent that the individual replaces itself by the end of its lifetime. there are different strategies that have evolved....humans invest huge amounts of energy in a few offspring...koi invest very little energy in any one offspring but they have millions of offspring within a lifetime. human offspring are very similar to the parents..if the parent succeeds under the current environment then the offspring are very likely to succeed.
A Koi/carp strategy is to have as much genetic ariation as is reasonable so that at least ONE of thier offspring survives out od several spawnings. Inherent within a koi is a vast Genotype underneath the phenotype. This in and of itself provides variety in the spawn. Also within a Carp's strategy is that the genes get scrambled when gametes are made, much more so than with animals that have small numbers of offspring...and finally do to nothing in this segment explaining why cloned koi do not have the exact pattern of theiir single parent...I believe that the environment an egg is maintained within while it matures will set a koi's pattern.
Pattern change within the egg is actually the BEST place for it to occur, the relationship that a koi's PATTERN AND COLOR has with the environment will have a profound effect on a koi/carp's ability to avoid predation.
Factors that could set the color and pattern while within the egg...
pH
temperature
turbidity
substrate
sunshine
current
wave action
proximity to other eggs
surface texture the egg is attached to
(many others)
While some have a corelation that could understandable shift the pattern and color to one that might decrease the chances of a koi/carp being seen by a predator, Any change in color and pattern would increase the chances that ONE of the fry would achieve adulthood.
And while the mechanism to change the patterns and colors of carp/koi would take up considerable room on a DNA strand the reactivity of the DNA to its environment would take up almost none and provide infinite variations.

it could also be that a variation/abnormality of this feature might be a reason we get the pleasure we do from these fish.


once again...these are just thoughts...not facts...