Genetics of pied black and pied argente golden?

[lorelei80]

Hi everyone!
I haven't owned gerbils for years and I used to know everything about them, including genetics, etc. I've forgotten everything! The price you pay for getting older!
Anyway, my teenage daughter acquired a pair of gerbils which were supposed to be two 6 month old females. A few months later I was playing with them and I noticed that one was in fact a male. Since they didn't produce any pups at that point, we decided to leave them together.
After one whole year went by, we heard tiny squeaks from the cage. Mother gerbil had 4 pups and I figured that this was a one off, since she had such a hard time conceiving this litter. RIGHT! Six weeks later, right before I was going to take the pups away from their parents, there was another lovely surprise...5 pups this time!
Now mother gerbil is happily raising her litter with her 1 daughter from her 1st litter and father gerbil lives with his 3 sons. I hope mother gerbil didn't get pregnant a 3rd time as there was a window of opportunity right after giving birth to the 2nd litter!
All pups will be loved and cared for by my family, but obviously we don't want them to keep having more and more if it can be avoided! At least mother and father are now separated!
Onto my real question, can I figure out the genetics of the parents based on their pups? Here is what they had:

1st litter:
1 male pied agouti
1 male solid lilac
1 male solid argente golden
1 female pied argente golden

2nd litter:
1 female pied black
1 female solid argente golden
1 female solid argente golden
1 female pied lilac
1 male pied argente golden

Is there a reason why agouti only showed up once in 9 pups? Did I get all of the color combinations possible with this pair or not? Thanks for any help!

[johanne]

Nine pups isn't a huge number so you're unlikely to see the percentages expect show up exactly. It would have been helpful if you'd mentioned the colours of the parents. From the pups only we can see that you only have two recessive genes that are shared by both parents, a and p. Any other recessives that might be carried didn't show up either because there aren't enough pups or only one parent carries it.

Anyway, your pups are:
agouti: A- P-
argente golden: A- pp
black: aa P-
lilac: aa pp

Between the parents there's at least one A and it's likely one parent is Aa and the other aa. Also at least one P and quite likely one parent is pp. The other loci are most likely all dominant but there's no way to know for sure, except for C where it's unlikely anyone is other than CC. I could give you full gene codes if you give us the colours of the parents. It happened you only have one agouti and one black because so many pups ended up with red eyes, pp, in this case.

[lorelei80]

Thanks for your reply!
I'm sorry, I thought that I worded my question clearly as I put the colors of the parents in the title of my question. I read in the sticky at the top of the forum that you should make the title of your post as descriptive as possible, hence "Genetics of pied black and pied argente golden?"
The father is pied black and the mother argente golden.

P.S. I just realized that I didn't exactly word my question correctly. I'm curious about the gene codes of the parents and what colors they could possibly produce.

[johanne]

Sorry, I thought you were referring to the pups somehow in the title. The full code of the father is aa CC E- Pp Uw- Sp+ and the mother is Aa CC E- pp Uw- Sp+. Your pups most likely represent all the possible colours from this pair.