Species or sub-species?

[jbnbsn99]

Correct on the zebra. It is really only the striping pattern that changes from the different regions. Shave a zebra and you usually won't be able to tell where it comes from (and you will also have an angry zebra).

 

[DDcorvus]

With the camel you are looking at a domestic species not unlike dogs. We bred those traits into these animals. Within natural occurring species, color morphs like these are very rare, like a true white tiger. An actual white tiger hasn't been seen since the 1950's.

Another nice example and one quite well studied species with different colour morphs is the gouldian finch, which has 3 different colour morphs , black-headed, red-headed and orange-headed. Both the black and orange-headed form are morphs of the red-headed ones.

Also in parrots species there are several species with morphs that are relatively common b.e. dusky lorikeet and the stella lorikeet (Charmosyna papou goliathina).

The morphs are a colour mutations that are randomly spread in the population. If you have by example two black-headed gouldian finches you could find a red-headed young in the nest. If you breed two subspecies together you ll get young with intermediary characteristics of both subspecies.

To make it a bit more complicated. With the knowledge we have now is that gouldian finch females prefer males with the same head-colour. Also young from a pair with the same head-colour seem to have better survival rates then ones that are from mixed head-colour pairs. We assume now that this is an early phase of speciation.

 

[nrg800]

• View topic - Head colours?

This has a really good discussion about Gouldian Head Colours, and the biology behind them.