[hypostatic]

So I'm pretty new to dart frogs, and I was wondering just how much selective breeding goes on with these guys. As I've lurked around the forums, I noticed that if someone had an individual frog with a different pattern expression than the norm, they would be encouraged to breed those frogs. I'm sure that with every organism that humans keep there is at least some level of unconscious selective breeding.

So is deliberate selective breeding common with dart frogs? I know that with leopard geckos they can be bred for a specific color, or even for a larger size.

 

[thedude]

it is generally frowned upon to selective breed any dart frogs. we like to keep them as close to the wild populations as possible however, so any odd balls that pop up are usually bred to make sure we keep those alleles in the gene pool, so it can be as diverse as possible so we have healthy animals in the future. that means breeding the odd ball with a normal specimen, instead of like with like.

there are a few "designer" morphs out there though. things like "sky blue" azureus, "no dot" citronellas, and possibly a few auratus morphs. its really unfortunate that people have made them but oh well i guess. its also unfortunate what has happened to the snake and leopard gecko hobbies. hopefully that will never happen to th dart hobby.

 

[SmackoftheGods]

As has been said, there is line breeding that goes on. However, many (most?) of us discourage it. When you find an oddball on the board and it's encouraged to be bred, check to see whether the poster is encouraging breeding for that trait, or encouraging breeding so the oddball gene gets back into the gene pool.

I don't know of anyone who discourages _owning_ oddballs, but selective breeding them for the trait is usually frowned upon.

 

[skylsdale]

Also, we need to be careful with our wording:

Line breeding simply means breeding frogs together that come from a specific genealogical group of frogs...and can be quite diverse.

Selective breeding means breeding like/similar animals together with certain traits in order to produce a specific desired phenotype.

 

[hypostatic]

Well any other type of organism that humans try to keep in an artificial environment undergoes a domestication selective process -- we are selecting for animals that stay alive and breed easily in a terrarium. For example, I'm almost sure I've read that 10 years ago azureus was an experts-only frog, but now it's considered a good novice frog.

 

[Chris Miller]

Well any other type of organism that humans try to keep in an artificial environment undergoes a domestication selective process -- we are selecting for animals that stay alive and breed easily in a terrarium. For example, I'm almost sure I've read that 10 years ago azureus was an experts-only frog, but now it's considered a good novice frog.

It was considered experts only because at the time it was thought to be an endangered species with a severely limited gene pool (still limited, but at the time it seemed like there would only ever be a couple lines of them) in captivity. They were expensive to obtain and since they were so rare, people wanted to keep them in the hands of experienced keepers only to make sure no frog would be wasted.

 

[SmackoftheGods]

Also, we need to be careful with our wording:

Line breeding simply means breeding frogs together that come from a specific genealogical group of frogs...and can be quite diverse.

Selective breeding means breeding like/similar animals together with certain traits in order to produce a specific desired phenotype.

Thank you for pointing out that particular semantic. Let me rephrase the intent of my post:

Selective breeding: bad.

Line breeding: particularly bad when there are other frogs you could be breeding your stock with....

 

[billschwinn]

Thank you for pointing out that particular semantic. Let me rephrase the intent of my post:

Selective breeding: bad.

Line breeding: particularly bad when there are other frogs you could be breeding your stock with....

I would think the real problem would be Inbreeding, that is where many problems could arise eventually.

 

[Ed]

Out breeding is also a risk...

 

[hypostatic]

Heh, I've learned about inbreeding depression in my biology classes, but turns out there's also an outbreeding depression.

The real problem with inbreeding is that recessive alleles pop up more often -- such as the recessive allele for albinism. But the captive population size is so relatively small that I feel like inbreeding is something that would be hard to avoid. I think we also can't really avoid inbreeding because most of us don't have real pedigrees for the frogs.

Inbreeding also causes loss of alleles and low genetic diversity. Populations with very low genetic diversity (ie, humans and dogs) can suffer from genetic diseases like cancer and sickle cell anemia.

 

[Ed]

Heh, I've learned about inbreeding depression in my biology classes, but turns out there's also an outbreeding depression.

The real problem with inbreeding is that recessive alleles pop up more often -- such as the recessive allele for albinism. But the captive population size is so relatively small that I feel like inbreeding is something that would be hard to avoid. I think we also can't really avoid inbreeding because most of us don't have real pedigrees for the frogs.

Inbreeding also causes loss of alleles and low genetic diversity. Populations with very low genetic diversity (ie, humans and dogs) can suffer from genetic diseases like cancer and sickle cell anemia.

Outbreding depression can be just as devestating as inbreeding depression and can take several generations after the out cross to demonstrate the problems.

For a good review of the risks for captive populations see http://www.montana.edu/~wwwbi/staff/creel/bio480/edmands 2007.pdf

Ed