"Albino" green/blue & bronze aurauts

[Dartfrogfreak]

Just a thought,

but possibly due to more siblings breeding together??

amazing looking nonetheless

[rmelancon]

That's a good point, the genetics folks can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that albinism, amelanism, etc. are all recessive traits. Therefore it takes breeding two animals both carrying the recessive gene to produce young that exhibit the trait. In the two cases I have been involved with (inferalanis and these) I'm fairly sure they all have been the result of sibling pairs. I still maintain that there is nothing wrong with breeding siblings and that inbreeding is a part of these frogs natural history. That being said I certainly don't discourage trying to find unrelated frogs for breeding.

Hey I wanted to add to the getting picked off in nature bit. People with albinism have poor vision due to light sensitivity and also an essential pigment missing from their retina. I wonder, and would suspect that albino frogs have a similar issue, and may have a more difficult time getting food in nature. In a viv, food is sort of relatively available and in a predictable place to boot. In my experience with albinism genetics, it is a recessive gene, and so you need two recessives one for each parent to express the albinism. And then I think its a one in 4 chance, not sure on that though. So it could be that the albinism has been lying dormant for a long period and when its expressed that frog doesn't typically make it to breeding age, but the genotype would still be passed on since you can be a carrier of the gene an not have albinism, the brothers and sisters survived, and so will pass the recessive along. So now the recessive gene has been getting forwarded along repeatedly and its happening that frogs each carrying the recessive genes are pairing up just by pure numbers of carriers, that could explain the larger occurence of albinism in the hobby in the past few years. The more we captive breed the more often this will become common, since there is naturally going to be a higher success rate of viable frogs, and then also the expressing albinos also survive to pass on the gene, if they are albino then they are I think sure to pass on the recessive gene to the offspring further increasing the chance of albino expression in the tads, simply because they needed two recessives to express, and so have no other option but to pass on a recessive.

This is of course assuming albinism in darts works the same way it does in people, and reptiles, and others. I know that with reptiles like snakes, people will sell babies from a clutch that came from a parent with albinism because there is a high chance that even though that particular individual isn't expressing if you paired them up with another recessive you've got a good chance of getting the phenotype.

To explain why I know most of this, I work with people who are visually impaired, and that includes albinism, that's where the vision tangent came from anyway. In short, its a really cool looking frog! :-) If someone is a frog geneticist please correct me if I'm in error in the genetics bit, cause most of that is generalizing to the field of darts, and even then I got most of it casually working with albinism.

~Mickey

Gorgeous frogs Rob... I find it interesting that there have been no responses from high-horsed purists berating you for having the "audacity" to try and sell or trade these frogs. I imagine that whoever buys these will try to breed them to prove out the genetics and thus make it more readily available to hobbyists, which I certainly have no problem with. If anyone remembers the "controversy" that I unknowingly caused earlier this year with my bastard Kahlua x Blue auratus offspring (which are now beautiful sub-adults), practically every response I got was someone calling for my head for destroying the hobby. People suggested everything from culling them to donating them to a zoo. I understand that there are pragmatic differences between the frogs I produced and these albinos, but where are all the people who are "scared" that they might unknowingly buy a het for albino auratus when they were just trying to breed pure Green & Blacks? Seems to be a disparity in the popular opinion... just my casual observation. Personally, I wish I had something of value to trade for those albinos.

-Brett
Two Kings Herp

[rmelancon]

I think the difference is pretty clear actually. These are not hybrids. What you created by crossing two separate and distinct morphs are hybrids. These are the result of breeding two of the same morph, not crossing morphs. The problem arises when you cross morphs and get an animal that looks like an existing morph and there is no way to tell the difference. These problems have been discussed ad nauseum already. I understand your point about people unknowingly getting a het animal, but if they get animals that are het for albino, the offspring will still be the morph they bought. Although a percentage may be albino, the bloodline for the morph is still pure. Keeping morphs separate and distinct is what people in this hobby (most) are striving for and if that's not important to you than all I can do is make my arguments why they (hybrids) are a bad idea.
The problem has always been knowingly creating hybrids. Linebreeding, which although unintentional is basically how these animals occured, is different IMO than hybridizing. I know there are those vehemently opposed to linebreeding but to me it's a completely different argument.
As long as people don't start hybridizing these with other mophs of auratus in order to get "albino Kaluahs", which I'm imagining would be your intent, then there is no harm done. The thought of that alone makes me seriously consider never releasing any of these animals.