Male guppyEUREKALERT, ANNA PRICEMale guppies’ vibrant colors and the yellow and black stripes that give the zebrafish its name are both products of pigment cells. Two research groups have now learned more about how these cells are organized to form these characteristic patterns.
In work published in PLOS One this week (January 22), a team from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, showed that at least two of three types of pigment cells—melanophores, xanthophores, and iridophores—contribute to male guppies’ colors. Using electron microscopy, the researchers found that pigment layers in both the dermis and hypodermis played a role in generating the fishes’ spots. Iridophores were present in each color trait the researchers studied, which they wrote suggested “that complex interactions between different chromatophore types both may be involved in establishing color patterns and [enhancing] color signals.”
Meanwhile, Hiroaki Yamanaka and Shigeru Kondo of Osaka University in Japan investigated the formation of the zebrafish’s stripes, which the literature suggests are generated by the interactions of ...
