Effects of single albino gene substitutions on the performance of mice in a compound avoidance-discrimination task.

Congenic C57BL/6J mice of the +/+, +/c and c/c genotypes were tested for motoric activity, active avoidance and visual discrimination performance in a variant of the Thompson-Bryant box. The three genotypes were observed to be identical in terms of motor activity, but differed greatly with regard to both avoidance and discrimination performance. On the avoidance portion of the task the c gene appeared to act in an additive fashion, with the +/+ mice being superior to the +/c mice, which were in turn superior to the c/c animals. Visual discrimination performance, however, indicated that the + allele operated in a dominant manner; here c/c mice were found to be inferior in performance when compared to either +/+ or +/c animals while no differences were observed between the two pigmented genotypes. Therefore, under the conditions of the present experiment, the albino gene shows incomplete dominance for active avoidance behavior and recessiveness for visual discrimination performance.