Auratus Colors

[corbsclinton]

I have read as many hybrid threads as I can because I find the debate and the post fascinating. When I entered into the hobby a year ago I too wanted to ask these questions but instead read. And then read some more. I respect all of your views.

Please respect mine:

I really think the auratas have been cross bred for some time. I would love to see (and maybe, it does in fact exist) the UE or INIBICO documentation for the Blue & Bronze, Green and Bronze, Camo/Kahula and Cream reticulated. I may be completely wrong and if so I accept it, but couldn't all these be hybrids of the Green and Black, some variant of the "Ancon Hill", and the blue and black that got cross-bred. It could have even happened in the wild, as most auratus origin are from Panama. Someone who has been to Panama may be able to tell us more on the geographical possibilities of this? Does the dominant/recessive color characteristics we know for sure disprove this?

My point is this:

Patrick Nabors, who I respect and who encouraged me into this hobby has this on his website:
Commentary on D. auratus "Blue and Bronze":

" have recently obtained a group of these frogs, and they are looking very nice. The parents are blue and bronze, and the parents of those frogs are normal green and bronze. From what I have been told they are about like the normal green and bronze form in terms of behavior and shyness. "

Do all of you really think that there wasn't some blue in that bloodline before the grandparents??

Is it going to impact the life expectancy negatively because it is a possible hybrid? Is the frog's quality of life going to suck? Should we not breed these beautiful animals if we are lucky enough to get a pair? If the pair spits out some green and bronze like the grand parents should those be bred?

I mean no ill will to any of you. I have no intenton of a hybrid colony. I just really think the auratus have already crossbred and thats where these beautiful morphs that cost anywhere from 3 to 5 times that of standard green and blacks come from.

Please forgive my ignorance if I missed the thread that explained all this. I never stop learning on this site so thanks to all.

[defaced]

You have no clue how nice it is to read someone's first post that is this well researched. Good work.

It could have even happened in the wild, as most auratus origin are from Panama.

It is very likely that this is the case, but, there has been alot of discussion about the word "morph" lately (Science and Conservation section, Ding dong the morph is dead, by bbrock). I think if you read what's discussed in that thread, you'll understand why intermixing in the wild is fine while doing the same in captivity is not considered to be.

If he doesn't pop in on this, Ben C (that's his username) has done research on Hawiian Auratus and their appearance. He may be able to give you some good information on what you're thinking.

[corbsclinton]

Mike, I am going to have to read that again a few times but that thread was money. I haven't ever heard populations explained like that. It definately got me thinking...


Here is the link in case anyone is interested:

http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20874

[bbrock]

I think there is likely a combination of things going on witht he auratus in the hobby but my opinion is that mixing is probably at the bottom of the list. D. auratus do show a lot of geographic variablity with populations and subpopulstions showing distinct morphological differences. And auratus have a very large range for a dart frog so there are a lot of wild populations (with their inherent morpholigical differences) out there. And finally auratus have been imported in greater numbers and from more locations than any other pdf. So my hunch is that the majority of the "morphs" in the hobby are either from legitimately distinct natural populations, or they have been artificially selected from naturally variable populations (what I call Invent-O-Morph). I would place crossing lines at the bottom of the list for reasons why we see so many morphs in the hobby though.

[corbsclinton]

Being selected from legitimately distinct natural populations versus being artificially selected from naturally variable populations:

This frog farmer from Panama 20 years ago crosses a couple streams and a cliff he's never been before and he suddenly notices ALL the frogs hes been collecting are a different color/pattern in this neck of the woods. Wow, I'm going to send a bunch of these back togther.

versus

This same frog farmer from Panama goes to the edge of the same area he has always gone to collect his aruatus when he sees a strange one. He moves closer to see and sees this one is a different color! Man, they will probably pay me double for this one! So he swoops it up and keeps his eye out for any others as he knows a pair of these strange looking ones will probably benefit them greatly.


I think I have that correctly?

So one of my question is this:

What if the frog farmer searched and searched but didn't find that second one. Mean while he kept the first with some of the dominant color. They reproduced and spit out this new color 10% of the time. They paired siblings from different clutches and wham, you have a "morph", artificially selected from variable populations.

I used a frog farmer from 15 years ago as an example. From what I read about populations last night, it is very likely that it happened in nature before that.

Now we come to category that no one wants to talk about.

Who thinks it would be easier for some guy in Germany in 1997 to accomplish this?, without having to answer to ethics or the views of a board like this, or doesnt have to provide UE or INIBICO proof of legal importation,

So we can guess when it happened but none us trully knows whether that blue in the bloodline was "introduced" naturally a long time ago or was it by the "wreckless" hobbyist or breeder that decided to try something new on your beautiful frog's great-grandparents and didn't tell anybody. Just made a fortune selling auratus for $150.

Is there a way to prove this genetically? I don't know enough to speak on it and I have to go to work.

[bbrock]

The scenario you describe is much more common than you think. I know for a fact that batches of auratus have come in and the folks in the US receiving them have divied them up according to morphology. Their thinking is that the frogs were probably collected from a number of different wild locations and mixed together so they try to split them back out to what was "natural". I think they are kidding themselves personally and there is no way to know for sure. You can drive yourself crazy playing these games. I think the best bet is to maintain groups using the "best available information". If a shipment comes in with a mix of variable frogs, I don't think we can assume that these frogs are from multiple wild populations. And even if we knew for certain that they were, we could not assume we could split them back out correctly. As for the scenario of collecting the "pretty ones" from the wild. Hesselhause described exactly that scenario in his book. Who the heck would collect the "ugly" ones? So at some point we need to get comfortable with the fact that some/many captive populations are simply not representative of wild populations but that is okay. They still look and act like wild frogs to us and there are probably still wild frogs that look and act like them. What more do we want? In other words, we could start doing a lot better about managing captive populations but we probably shouldn't get too carried away trying to force the ambiguous captives back into perfect bins.

Genetic testing could be used to determine population status in theory but the logistics of doing it make it impractical.

[sbreland]

Originally Posted by defaced

You have no clue how nice it is to read someone's first post that is this well researched. Good work.

I don't know much about auratus so I don't have any real good viewpoints to add to this discussion, but I wanted to echo Mike's sentiment and welcome you wholeheartedly. If more would follow your lead there would be far less threads on the same subject over and over again, so I really want to thank you for doing things the right way... researching all you can and asking questions of what you can't find.