Himalayan rabbits having black fur where their skin is cold and white fur where it's warm is a useful and obvious example of this.
Himalayan rabbits having black fur where their skin is cold and white fur where it's warm is a useful and obvious example of this.
That's a separate effect, known as acromelanism, or "point coloration". It's the result of an enzyme which is inactivated by higher temperatures, not a genetic change - the extent of pointing can change over an animal's lifetime, and the specific pattern isn't inherited. (For instance, if you somehow convinced a cat with color pointing to wear a sweater, its fur would stay light under that sweater, but any offspring it had would not inherit that pattern.)
A better example might be how some animals (turtles in particular) have their sex defined by their egg temperature
That isn't a genetic change either, though. Those species of turtle either lack the typical sex-determining chromosomes entirely, or have sex-determining chromosomes which can be inactivated during development. The genotype doesn't change as a result of what temperature the egg is incubated at; its expression does.
Further reading: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210726102148.h...
That's exactly the point. Gene expression can be modified by the environment
Are the imprinted patterns then inherited, though?
No. Sounds like I was wrong earlier.