From Yahoo News:
This May 9, 2012 photo provided by the New England Aquarium in Boston shows a rare calico lobster that could be a 1-in-30 million, according to experts. The lobster, discovered by Jasper White’s Summer Shack and caught off Winter Harbor, Maine, is being held at the New England Aquarium for the Biomes Marine Biology Center in Rhode Island. The lobster is dark with bright orange and yellow spots. (AP Photo/New England Aquarium, Tony LaCasse)
I have no idea what mutation this is, if it’s indeed a mutation (I suspect it is). One possibility is suggested here.
h/t: Matthew Cobb
I think the video says it all!
Either that link is worng, or JAC is totally trolling us. In which case, kudos to you, sir!
Love the kitteh though, even if he is the worng link!
I wonder if it is a chimera.
Could be due to a transposon induced mutation.
Do the variously sized circular spots suggest a signaling gene for the yellow is latching on randomly in a few cells over an extended interval of embryo development?
It’s apparently just a rare genotype, and not necessarily a recent mutation. Google “yellow spotted lobster” and you’ll find a number of references to similar animals, and images.
I’m going to be on an environmental influence, just to buck the trend :p Can I get long odds?
Explosion at a nearby paint factory?
I am just happy it made it to an aquarium and not a dinner plate.
This site
http://freshscience.org.au/?p=1389
Gives some reasonably authoritive-sounding information about crustacean colouration in general and lobster colouration in particular.
You’ll have found several images going around of “half-and-half” colour morphs, where the left and right sides of the body have different colours. These are indicated to be hermaphrodites, suggesting an (unsurprising) linkage between colouration and sexual genetics.
On the subject of lobster on-plate or on-seabed … I haven’t got the foggiest idea how to even start on one, and I’ve never had the inclination to learn. They look difficult to get into. But the fragments of carapace I’ve encountered in rocks or washed up on the beach look wonderfully complicated mechanisms.
Vive le Zoidberg!
Here’s one that was in the news recently:
http://www.myndytv.com/dpps/strange_news/strange/unusual-lobsters-coloring-is-split-down-the-middle-ob12-jgr_4157720
LOOKS TASTY.
“I have no idea what mutation this is”
A delicious, delicious mutation…
🙂
Did we just got (cat)lick-LOLled!?
HTML fail. here.
I think Torbjorn was trying to link to this site on lobster genetics.
A 1 in 30 million chance is indistinguishable from no chance. You would not win a lotto draw in 6000 lifetimes with those odds. Therefore that creature does not exist.
Do you think they are evolving ways to be less appetising? Still looks very tasty to me.
Given the billions of lobster eggs hatched every year, 1 in 30 million ought to happen from time to time. One in 30 million is not the same as 0, as any megalottery winner can tell you.
I love that leaping kitteh – scratching my head as to how grey tabby has much to do with calico lobsters
Perhaps it requires a leap of faith
I wonder how the opposite sex feels about this colouration? Not very favourable I assume or it would be more common perhaps.