What's up with hazel eyes?

[QUOTE=Sarah Woodruff]
I thought that the number or size of melanin cells would determine how much “brown” pigment there would be in the iris, like with skin colour.

[QUOTE]

that may in fact be the case; I really don’t know enough about pigmentation to say. I know melanin production does affect eye color, so some genes involved in it eye pigmentation surely affect at least melanocyte manufacture and/or competence in melanin production, if not also size (I don’t know whether or not that’s a factor). melanin’s just one of many different factors in coloration of the eye, though; it’s the interaction of all these factors that ultimately produce the color you see.

One day I was working with my Turkish colleague going over a document, and the afternoon sunlight caught my brown eyes from the side. She said to me, “Gözlerin bal rengi” (Your eyes are honey colored.) A nice Turkish sort of expression.