Experimental analysis of the extensive pigmentation in the Silkie fowl embryo: evidence for an environmental regulatory process.

Heterospecific coelomic grafts, associated with the quail-chick marker system, showed that quail embryo melanoblasts exhibit the same invading behavior as Silkie fowl melanoblasts, when they came into contact with Silkie embryo organs. Thus the colonization or noncolonization of the organs of the Silkie fowl embryo by melanoblasts seems to depend on environmental cues.