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OMIA:000375-9049 : Feather colour, white or white spotting, EDNRB2-related in Pavo cristatus (Indian peafowl)

In other species: Mallard , rock pigeon , Japanese quail

Categories: Pigmentation phene

Single-gene trait/disorder: yes

Disease-related: unknown

Key variant known: yes

Year key variant first reported: 2025

Cross-species summary: Renamed from 'Feather colour, panda/dotted white' [12/08/2023], also called piebald

Species-specific name: Leucistic plumage, white plumage. A synonym for peafowl is peacock.

Species-specific description: Wang et al. (2025): "Leucistic plumage blue peafowls (also called white peafowl) are blue peafowl plumage color mutants that are characterized by white plumage, but the eyes are black because they contain melanin (Liu et al., 2022)."

History: Wang et al. (2025): "As early as 1868, Darwin reported the white peafowls and pied peafowl (blue-and-white flight plumage color), the mutant individuals of the blue peafowl’s plumage color, which shows that the white peafowl appeared at least 150 years ago (Darwin, 1868)."

Molecular basis: Wang et al. (2025) "identified that the nonsense mutation (g.4:12583552G>A) in the EDNRB2 gene is the genetic causative mutation for leucistic plumage of blue peafowl ... ." 

Associated gene:

Symbol Description Species Chr Location OMIA gene details page Other Links
EDNRB2 Pavo cristatus - no genomic information (-..-) EDNRB2 Ensembl

Variants

By default, variants are sorted chronologically by year of publication, to provide a historical perspective. Readers can re-sort on any column by clicking on the column header. Click it again to sort in a descending order. To create a multiple-field sort, hold down Shift while clicking on the second, third etc relevant column headers.

WARNING! Inclusion of a variant in this table does not automatically mean that it should be used for DNA testing. Anyone contemplating the use of any of these variants for DNA testing should examine critically the relevant evidence (especially in breeds other than the breed in which the variant was first described). If it is decided to proceed, the location and orientation of the variant sequence should be checked very carefully.

Since October 2021, OMIA includes a semiautomated lift-over pipeline to facilitate updates of genomic positions to a recent reference genome position. These changes to genomic positions are not always reflected in the ‘acknowledgements’ or ‘verbal description’ fields in this table.

OMIA Variant ID Breed(s) Variant Phenotype Gene Allele Type of Variant Source of Genetic Variant Reference Sequence Chr. g. or m. c. or n. p. Verbal Description EVA ID Year Published PubMed ID(s) Acknowledgements
1773 Feather colour, white EDNRB2 nonsense (stop-gain) Naturally occurring variant 4 g.12583552G>A p.(W206*) 2025 39965774
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Cite this entry

Nicholas, F. W., Tammen, I., & Sydney Informatics Hub. (2025). OMIA:000375-9049: Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals (OMIA) [dataset]. https://omia.org/. https://doi.org/10.25910/2AMR-PV70

References

Note: the references are listed in reverse chronological order (from the most recent year to the earliest year), and alphabetically by first author within a year.

2025 Wang, G., Zhang, X., Zhao, X., Ren, X., Chen, A., Dai, W., Zhang, L., Lu, Y., Jiang, Z., Wang, H., Liu, Y., Zhao, X., Wen, J., Cheng, X., Zhang, Y., Ning, Z., Ban, L., Qu, L. :
Genomic evidence for hybridization and introgression between blue peafowl and endangered green peafowl and molecular foundation of leucistic plumage of blue peafowl. Gigascience 14:giae124, 2025. Pubmed reference: 39965774. DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giae124.
2022 Liu, S., Chen, H., Ouyang, J., Huang, M., Zhang, H., Zheng, S., Xi, S., Tang, H., Gao, Y., Xiong, Y., Cheng, D., Chen, K., Liu, B., Li, W., Ren, J., Yan, X., Mao, H. :
A high-quality assembly reveals genomic characteristics, phylogenetic status, and causal genes for leucism plumage of Indian peafowl. Gigascience 11:giac018, 2022. Pubmed reference: 35383847. DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giac018.
1993 Somes, R.G., Burger, R.E. :
Inheritance of the white and pied plumage color patterns in the Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus). Journal of Heredity 84:57-62, 1993. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a111277.
1868 Darwin, C.R. :
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication John Murray, London :Vol 1, p. 290, 1868. URL: https://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F877.1&viewtype=side&pageseq=1.

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  • Created by Imke Tammen2 on 20 Feb 2025
  • Changed by Imke Tammen2 on 20 Feb 2025
  • Changed by Frank Nicholas on 20 Feb 2025