Comparison between morphs’ melanin pathway coding genes
From the 15 coding sequences compared between colour morphs, only 5 showed genetic variation: AGRP (agouti-related neuropeptide),POMC (proopiomelanocortin), TYRP1 (Tyrosinase-related protein1) - all synonymous mutations - and among copies of the (MCHR ) melanocortin concentrating hormone receptor where we found both a non-synonymous substitution in the copy that appeared to be functional (no stop codons were identified within the coding sequence) and also a non-synonymous substitution on the other copy – possibly a pseudo-gene as identified in the chicken (Cui et al., 2017). Reconstructing the MCHR phylogeny suggests pseudogenization to be trans-specific and associated with a putative gene duplication (Fig. 1).