Inbreeding Insects...?

Discussion in 'Feeder Forum' started by Sensation, Mar 6, 2007.

  1. Sensation

    Sensation New Member

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    Everyone knows that you should not inbreed pets, and that it can cause problems in captivity and in the wild. Im curious as to know about inbreeding insects though. Everyone who breeds there own insects obviously inbreeds. Its inevidable, but does it make a difference for insects, or even small animals? Im not too sure what the result could be from inbreeding, does it really matter?
    I have been meaning to post this question up for some time.

    Thanks.
     
  2. JEFFREH

    JEFFREH Administrator

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  3. Cavemanpets

    Cavemanpets Well-Known Member

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    I had never thought about it... as far as i know though it does not effect the quality of the insects when they "in breed" .... thats a good question though...
     
  4. JEFFREH

    JEFFREH Administrator

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  5. 789

    789 New Member

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    Inbreeding can cause reproductive problems from what I have read. I don't know how many generations it would take but I've read that reproductive rates can greatly drop. Not sure how far down the tree that would be though
     
  6. JEFFREH

    JEFFREH Administrator

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  7. Tux

    Tux Well-Known Member

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    the insect gene pool is much bigger then herps and such so its less of a concern but I introduce new insects into all of my colonies periodically.
     
  8. JEFFREH

    JEFFREH Administrator

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  9. Sensation

    Sensation New Member

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    Oh really. I assumed it would have physical defects on an animal that was a result of inbreeding. So all it does is affect the reproduction rate.

    Thanks for answering my question.
     
  10. JEFFREH

    JEFFREH Administrator

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  11. Tux

    Tux Well-Known Member

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    Because of the size of the gene pool "possible" physical defects in insects would take many many generations of inbreeding to show any signs of life. As I said above I take precautions to avoid even the slightest of chance but I doubt anyone will see such things, at least not often if at all.
     
  12. FrogmanJ

    FrogmanJ New Member

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    Basically all animals in the pet trade are inbred. How else do you think they come up with such beautiful mutations? It is the direct result of successive inbreeding and line breeding, mother to male offspring, and father to female offspring, and offspring to offspring.
     
  13. Tux

    Tux Well-Known Member

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    Incorrect FrogmanJ. You can produce mostly the same thing with time, people do not have to in breed,... if one shows a trait, their are others that are het, and you outbreed those to make more hets. A few generations later, you can breed the hets together and get at that point ones that are far enough apart there is no inbreeding. 5th generation is very safe , 4th is usually okay, but not closer.
     
  14. FrogmanJ

    FrogmanJ New Member

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    Incorrect Tux. People generally do no have that sort of patience, and inbreeding causes traits to pop up much much sooner. Not to mention that the majority of animals in the pet trade are all descended from only a handful of individuals that founded the pet trade population.
     
  15. Tux

    Tux Well-Known Member

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    just because ppl do something doesn't make it the right way to do it. my statements were in no way incorrect, if you believe they are PLEASE state how. People not having the decency to properly do something does not make the proper way of doing it incorrect. Bearded dragons as pets come from a wide array of stock but the gene pool is still limited due to recent actions of impatient inbreeders. If you talk to or read anything from respected breeders you will see im dead on the mark with the above statements. Heck go talk to cheri or Kathryn Tosney.
     
  16. wschippr

    wschippr New Member

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    Well a heated debate about inbreeding kind of odd. To answer the above question simply is no, there generally is not any adverse effects of inbreeding in more primitive species (smaller genome) such as insects. Even the effects of inbreeding in more advanced species is still unknown, although it is known now that it is not as bad as once thought. But if a mutated gene
    that caused adverse effects on the organism were in the gene pool than inbreeding would quickly allow that gene to be express if it is recessive (which it would most likely be, cause if it was not than inbreeding does not play a role.) So inbreeding it self does not cause any significant problems it’s the accumulation of mutated genes that would gather in an inbred gene pool. But with insects they produce so many young that ill-effect genes are generally phased out due to competition with their insect colony mates. If you look back to British race horse inbreeding was blamed for some horrible mutated horse, this in fact was true. Inbreeding did cause this but it took a significantly long time for this to happen (around 50 generations) and since horses are a more “advance species” than reptiles (larger genome) it is safe to say that it would take more generations to produce oddities in reptile populations. (This is why animals took an evolutionary explosion in the Cambrian age, (due to an increase in complexity in animal genomes.)
     
  17. sweet_sorrow123

    sweet_sorrow123 Member

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    I agree one hundred percent with Tux, if that makes a difference. Reputable breeders should and usually DO have the patience.
     
  18. Tux

    Tux Well-Known Member

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    wschipper to prove tour 50 generations theory wrong I will refer to Tosney:

    Kathryn on inbreeding
    If your male and female dragons are siblings, it may be best to simply not incubate the eggs, even if they are fertile. (You can freeze the eggs to assure development ceases.) Generally with this degree of inbreeding, some eggs will be infertile, some embryos will die during incubation or during hatching, and only about half are likely to hatch. A few of those may have birth defects, but others would be perfectly healthy. If you do let them hatch and sell them at a swap, you should ask the going price but you will need to warn people that they are siblings, and that if they want two BDs, they should get only one from you, since if THESE siblings were bred together, the incidence of severe birth defects is a near certainty.
     
  19. wschippr

    wschippr New Member

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    No offence Tux but that statement is a lie, go look at the royal families for goodness sake, they have been inbreeding for almost 600 years, same can be said with race horses. Cats are often inbred to a much larger extent than 2 generations (ask any vet or humane society). Lastly tell me how inbreeding causes mutations? It does not, that’s how. All inbreeding does in make recessive traits appear quicker and more readily due to a shrinking of the gene pool size. This is called the bottle neck effect and can be over come with in a few generations once the poor mutations have been purged from the gene pool. Another prime example is cheetahs, their populations were once smaller than 500 (this is an estimate of course), which happened after the last ice age. Now most cheetahs are closely related to each other (around second cousins, and this did have some bad consequences, such as fertility, but nothing that threatens the species at large). Research into the effects on inbreeding is still going on and the over all effects of inbreeding is still unknown. It is just known that inbreeding should be avoided if at all possible. But the number of individuals need to create a sustain able population is around 600 for complex species such as vertebrates.
     
  20. RobertII

    RobertII Well-Known Member

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    We are not talking about mammals or complex species. Were talking about feeders.Lets take Crickets. You cannot sort threw MILLIONS of Feeders in a Major Colony to separate family members. Inbreeding here is inevitable. Most of the offspring are sent out to be fed off, or to another colony, and I am sure some come back into the same colony. Now think, out of the Millions of feeders in a good producing colony, some of the off spring are coming back into this colony. The relationship is going to be far in most cases. I am sure there are occasions where the offspring meets the parents but this is all something that is out of our control.
    You can minimize inbreeding in insects to an extent by adding foreign stock to the colony but theirs no 100% way to avoid it. Often because of the short life cycle and adding in foreign stock the amount of inbreeding is lessoned therefore never seeing any ill effects.

    As far as keeping a quality in reptiles or other animals.
    Lets take Bearded Dragons.
    Say the trait you want to keep is Hypo.
    You have a single male hypo and you match the male with a female pastel, and you breed them.
    Some of the offspring have Pastel some are a mix and say you get 2 babies that are Hypo.
    Some people inbreed these 2 and hope the living survive. I feel they do this because they are lazy, and they don't want to wait.
    You could breed these 2 offspring out and get the trait in other breeding groups. But this takes longer.
    There will be cousins or second cousins that breed from this, partially because allot of people don't check background, and some that do take the chance.
    This here is considered inbreeding, but they survive, Now this is where people say inbreeding is ok.
    Now people who are outsiders and hear (Say on a forum like this) "I Inbred these 2 related dragons and it worked with no side effects" Now you have people who dont know the whole story thinking this is ok thing.
    Now there are people who breed Brothers and Sisters and they screw up hundreds of offspring with physical and mental defects, to sacrifice for maby 1 or 2 that survive. Even then most usually have short lives.
    This is wrong. But people do it.
    There is not much we can do about it but try to educate people, and that's why these forums are here. To Learn, to teach, and to discuss.

    -Robert
     
  21. Sensation

    Sensation New Member

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    So bassically it is okay to inbreed insects. It is not okay to inbreed reptiles. Right?
     
  22. Cavemanpets

    Cavemanpets Well-Known Member

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    thats what im getting lol
     
  23. Tux

    Tux Well-Known Member

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    correct Sensation, you can't stop insects from inbreeding but you can stop reptiles lol
     
  24. RobertII

    RobertII Well-Known Member

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    Re: RE: Inbreeding Insects...?

    ^^^:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D ^^^
    Agreed 100% Tux :) :wink:

    You can control animals like Reptiles, or Cat's or Horses (Others mentioned)

    Insects on the other hand are not. Too many
     
  25. wschippr

    wschippr New Member

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    I am just going to say this one more time. Inbreeding does not cause mutations they were already there, all of those problems are already there and if they are not then nothing will happen the off spring would appear normal. They are just recessive that is why they become expressed, because of the bottle neck effect a shrinking of the gene pool. For example I live on a farm, we as most farms have barn cats, I have witnessed several generations that were most likely inbred, my farm is fairly large, large enough to say that the present dominant males would breed with the females almost as soon as they come into season. Leaving little chance for outside males to breed with them, this in turn causes a limited gene pool of around a dozen cats, most likely they are brother-sister-father-mother relations. I have yet to see a mutated cat and their litters are fairly normal and normal off spring are produced. (whenever possible we take the kittens to the humane society/pet stores.) BTW the quarter horse was produce through massive inbreeding, almost always daughter to father, as was the dalmatian and several other breeds of dog. Most show rabbits were also bred daughter to father (Not so much anymore). While I do not encourage inbreeding the facts and any and all research information shows that inbreeding is not as problematic as once thought. So you would have to wait for a mutation to occur or if it is already there can be controlled through culling. It has also been shown that once rare and endangered animals that recovered (yes there are some) had some mutation problems for a few generations I cannot remember the generation number off of my head but once the population “purge” itself of these it was no longer a problem. Once again I am not indorsing the use of inbreeding, I for one do not practice it and by no means want other people to try their hands at inbreeding, inbreeding could cause valuable/horrible mutations to be lost as well as gained.
     

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