[bbrock]

Well here is the one subject that can draw me out of the shadows. As was mentioned, this is a frequent and perrenial topic on frognet. The last round of discussion did indeed result in discussion about breeding guidelines. The goal is to establish a set of guidelines that could be used to maintain the wild type characteristics of dendrobatids in captivity. The idea is that breeders who subscribe to using the guidelines could exchange frogs with others of like mind as insurance that the frogs were produced in a manner that conserves as many of the wild characteristics of the frogs as possible. As usual there was an exchange of ideas but nothing solid has come from the discussion.

I'll try to keep this uncharacteristically brief but hybrids are indeed dangerous to the hobby. All one has to do is look at the history of snake, orchid, dog, or any number of other breeding hobbies to see how hybridization leads to the decline and eventual elimination of wild type animals. Without careful documentation of pedigree along with targeted breeding guidelines, hybridization inevitably results in the pollution of wild type genes. I have a long laundry list of arguments against hybridization in the hobby but those are in the frognet archives if anyone cares to dig them out.

Regarding the question of whether albinos should be culled. I think the answer is yes and no. Albinism is a rare genetic variant in many species which does occur in nature. However, the occurence of albinism tends to be relatively rare and the animals expressing albinism often have low survivorship. So what to do with albinos that pop up in the hobby? What we SHOULDN'T do is start selectively breeding those frogs to propogate the albino trait. That's what started the corruption of the corn snake and many other good species. Albinism is special because it is rare. What good does it do to artificially make albinos common? All it does is destroy the mystique of a rare animal. Personally I think albinos should be restricted in their genetic contribution to future generations. This could be done by breeding the frog only once and then deciminating the offspring to the far reaches of the hobby. I would not reveal that those offspring may be harboring albino genes because this could lead to a feeding frenzy for clowns who want to produce a pure albino line. I would much rather see the genes float about the captive population at a very rare level to pop up now and then to provide hobbyists with the unexpected thrill of an albino.

Brent

 

[bbrock]

Arklier is right. When albinos exist, someone will start selectively breeding them. That's why a group of us have been working on a registry off and on over the past couple years. Until that is done, all we can do is strongly discourage hybridization and selective breeding. We can also do things as individual breeders. I've produced froglets with some very unusual color morphs. Those frogs were not released to the hobby but many of their siblings that might carry some of those genes are out there.

I disagree that we have to separate the topics of hybridization from selective breeding because I think they are both very destructive to the hobby if we want to maintain wild type animals. Selective breeding narrows the gene pool and therefore the variability of the animals. Think of any line of PDF other than auratus and then try to figure out how many breeders are consistently producing offspring from that line. In most cases the number of breeders will be no more than a half dozen. If each of those breeders selectively bred their frogs, a huge chunk of the genome of the line could be unnecessarily lost. Unfortunately I think this is a common practice among breeders though.

I also disagree that maintaining wild type frogs in the hobby is impossible or even difficult. Of course locality data is fantastic but it isn't necessary for breeding toward wild type. Nor does locality data guarantee future generations will remain wild type. Breeding for wild type simply requires that we make reasonable guesses as to the origins of captive frogs in the wild, breeding as widely and randomly as possible within the group of captive frogs that originated from an interbreeding wild population, and rearing froglets in ways that insure the behavioral traits characteristic of wild frogs are maintained. In other words, when choosing a mate for a frog, you pick an animal that you think is a good close match to an animal you think your frog might have mated with in the wild. You do not select mates solely based on appearance or size except for what is required to make a reasonable decision about what population the frogs might belong to. Finally, you would at least periodically test breeders to make sure they still possess proper egg caring, tad carrying, etc. behavior for successful reproduction. Remember that we aren't necessarily trying to produce frogs fit for reintroduction to the wild (although we could with locality data and good record keeping). All we want is to make sure that frogs 100 generations in the future still look and act like frogs in the wild. There are always people who doubt the "danger" of hybrids or selective breeding but many of us watched as corn snakes became progressively polluted with selective breeding until no cb wild type animals could be found. Not long ago you could hardly find a species orchid and when you did it would cost more than a fantasticus to bring it home. Once you lose the wild types in captivity, the only way to get them back is to return to the wild. That's a luxury that is going to become increasingly rare for dart frogs. Those of us who rail against hybrids and selective bred animals simply want to make sure that we don't take these little gems for granted.

 

[bbrock]

Let's say Sean and Patrick sells them, breeding these animals from 2 different breeders and trading with other breeders, say Todd and Phil, who are also interested in spotted retics, is not narrowing the gene pool in my opinion... or worse destructive to the hobby.
SB

If the spotted retics were selected from a larger population of frogs, then you HAVE narrowed the gene pool. You have selected only those alleles that lead to expression of the spotted trait and thrown away the rest. The result is a line of frogs that look more like clones of each other than the variable mix you would find in nature. It is impossible to know what genes get lost in the selection process. Who knows? There could have been a gene that might have someday produced a blue retic. Variability in nature is good because it allows animals to change and adapt to changing conditions. Selective breeding goes in the opposite direction.

 

[bbrock]

Tad wrote: I do think it would be a shame to see the "natural looking" specimens disappear from the hobby, I dont think will ever happen to many people feel the same way. However I think its hypocritical to be upset at someone who owns/breeds hybrids b/c its "not natural" if thats how you feel, you shouldnt be keeping the animals unless its part of your work as a conservationist or for a natural history museum because keeping them as pets is not "natural".


Tad, you and I have been through this before. The loss of "natural looking" animals is exactly what will happen if selective breeding runs rampant BEFORE a registry and guidelines are in place. Several decades ago you could buy a wild type cornsnake for $10-$30. Then the first albinos appeared and were fetching something around $200. Within a few generations albinos were common enough that the price was coming down and heterzygotes were dispersed throughout the hobby to the point that if you had a "wild type" animal, there was a good bet that it was heterozygous dominant for albinism. This was followed by melanistic, amelanistic, anaeurythristic, etc. until virtually every cb cornsnake in the hobby was the product of selective breeding of one or more "rare" alleles. Wild types virtually dissapeared as cb specimens. Why did this happen? Because recessive traits are masked by dominant ones so heterozygous animals cannot be distinguished by appearance. I've heard people say as long as the animals are honestly represented, there is no problem. That's true except that it doesn't work. How much do any of us really know about the origin of our own animals? Think about it. Now consider that just because you honestly represent frogs sold to someone, that doesn't mean that the next person, or the person after that will do the same. In the early days of the cornsnake fiasco people did honestly represent animals as hets for "blank" or what have you. But as the hets began to outnumber the true wild type animals it became more difficult to keep track of who was who. Genetics gets pretty complicated beyond a simple homozygous cross so things get confusing and animals get mixed up. Add to that the fact that many breeders have no background in genetics and it is easy to see how plain jane cb cornsnakes went the way of the dodo. Personally I'm pleased to be in a hobby with a mainstream core that is devoted to not repeating mistakes of the past.

Someone asked what was wrong with the dog breeding hobby. Was that a joke? Now many dogs make fine animals but let's get real and admit that they've created a number of breeds so full of congenital defects that they practically have to be hooked up to an I.V. and oxygen from the day they are born just to make them live long enough to reproduce. Even many good breeds have been all but ruined by a hobby that breeds almost entirely based on appearance which has led to snippy and neurotic animals. The AKC is not a good model to follow for breeding quality animals IMO.

And whoever said the killifish people have done it right, you are absolutely correct. They have both guidelines AND a registry and that is exactly what we need to do.

 

[bbrock]

Should one breed/introduce runts to their frog breeding programs to give a more natural outcome???

No. Runts and deformed froglets rarely survive in the wild. Obviously captive husbandry eliminates a lot of natural selection so obviously unfit animals should be culled.

As for hand selecting breeders, you're right, it's a form of narrowing the gene pool. It would just be stupid to pay money for frogs that look like they're on the verge of death. Also, if you are unsure of the geographic wild origin of a frog you want to breed, sometimes the only information you have to base a decision for choosing a mate is appearance. It does make sense that frogs that look alike are more likely to come from an interbreeding population than frogs that look different. However, when you get to the point of only choosing frogs that have a mickey mouse shape on their butts because you like that pattern, you have crossed the line into selective breeding. This is a fuzzy line mind you.

What I'm really suggesting is that we selectively breed frogs true to the wild populations the originated from but no further. Like others have said, various morphs of many species tend to show up predictably in certain locales. Auratus on Barro Colorado Island and distinctive from Toboga and those on the Carribean side of Costa Rica look different from the Pacific side. These types of distinctions should be maintained in captivity but we shouldn't invent distinctions like what I believe has happened in P. bicolor. I've had people ask if I have the "blue-legged" morph which as far as I can tell is a completely invented morph since I have a black-legged, bluish-legged, and yellow-green legged all from the same clutch. Pumilio were also mentioned and I just got off the phone with someone discussing the Bastimento pumilio. Justin has a photo of 4 or 5 Bastis all collected from the same tree and their colors range from red through yellow running the range of what is found in the hobby. Summers has demonstrated visual mate selection in these frogs where like frogs tend to breed with like frogs. Of course this isn't absolute which must account for the gradation of variability on the island. In captivity we tend to pair yellow with yellow, orange with orange, and so on. I contend that it would be perfectly legitimate to mix these morphs to allow the full range of variability to be expressed.

It's these types of debates that help maintain wild type frogs in the hobby and help us walk the line between producing mutts or clones. Wild types lie somewhere in between.

 

[bbrock]

There have been a small group of froggers who have hammered out a lot of the details on a registry over the past couple of years. Some code has actually been programed. Non-profit org or not, this effort will rely on volunteer effort and therefore goes in fits and starts according to people's schedules. The group that has been working on this is purposely small. This isn't to be exclusive or elitist but we found that having open discussions on frognet was not efficient because the same arguments kept circling around.

As for guidelines, Chuck Powell posted the following citation produced by the Aquatic Conservation Network. I've tried to find a copy of this publication without any luck:

Huntley, Robert V., and Langton, Roger W., eds., 1994, Captive
Breeding Guidelines: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Aquatic Conservation
Network, 61 p. ISBN 1-895655-02-1. Copies can be ordered for $12
from Aquatic Conservation Network, 540 Roosevelt Ave., Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada K2A 1Z8. Tel.: 613-729-4670.

I think this would be a good place for froggers to start in developing guidelines. My personal suggestion is that any group working on guidelines should include at least two people well versed in genetics and population biology and it would be good to have someone knowledgeable about conservation biology as well.

 

[bbrock]

TimStout wrote: Brent,
Is there enough known about the locations (size, seperation, crossover etc.) of these populations of auratus to make a determination or do we rely on the collectors/farmers word of original collection/population site.


I think we have a lot more information than we realize. Many serious froggers have traveled to the tropics and documented morphs of frogs they have encountered at various locations. At one of the late night IAD discussions Chuck N. gave a beautiful travelogue of the auratus morphs encountered as one moves from north to south. Pumilio and auratus seem particularly well documented. Of course you can't always look at one of these frogs and know for certain where it came from and there is no substitute for actual collection data if frogs are to be bred for conservation purposes, but there is a fair amount of information to let us make educated guesses about who should breed with who. I think shipment information can be really useful as well but, as you say, there is no way of knowing whether a collector or farmer has collected their animals from the same locale or kept animals separated by locality. Exactly what constitutes a "locality" is not always clear either. We also don't have great information (other than island populations) about where genetic bottlenecks might occur leading to separations of populations. I think widespread morphs like blue jeans pumilio are a particular problem. Are they widespread because because they have one large interbreeding population, or are there many subpopulations that just happen to exhibit a similar morph.

It's interesting that Dave mentioned Matt's Panamanian auratus because Matt and I talked about them quite a bit. I have "Costa Rican" auratus and I could see absolutely no difference in size, color, or pattern between the two. These fit with photos I've seen of the Carribean versant of Costa Rican auratus. It's possible that Panama and Costa Rica share the same large wild population. However, I have no supporting evidence that my frogs actually derived from Costa Rican stock other than that's what they were sold as and the fact that they match the morph of frogs found there. If I recall correctly, Matt's Panamanian have a similar background. Given these hazy backgrounds, I probably wouldn't get in a huge twist over interbreeding them. However, if one of the groups of frogs had information that would tend to link them with a particular country, then I would probably keep them apart. Because of these gradations in evidence supporting a frog's origin and different burdens of proof needed to use frogs for various reasons, I proposed a few years ago that guidelines support several grades of frog (e.g. scientific grade, hobbyist grade, general grade). I think somewhere in the frognet archives is even a list of lines of evidence that I felt would be needed to support each grade. Of course it fell flat on its face like most of my ideas.

 

[bbrock]

I remember in one of the last discussions on Frognet (where Chuck sited that aquatic conservation resource) that Justin Yeager voiced some concern on the difficulty of concretely placing frogs into groups based on 'quality.'

Tad has the right idea. We are talking about two different types of "quality". There is the grading we all do when deciding whether to buy a frog and noting that some frogs would be better off as fish bait. That's not something I would be interested in getting into in an organized way and would lead to AKC style testicle squeezing shows.

What I'm talking about is grades based on the reliability of locality or population data that are available. A scientific grade frog would require the most rigorous data. Basically nothing short of actual locality data would do and supporting information about population genetics would be helpful. These would be the frogs that could be used for conservation breeding programs or for scientific research to infer knowledge about wild populations. Frankly, such breeding programs would be above the abilies or desires of most of us but it is an important group to identify where they exist so we can hold breeding guidelines to the highest standard with an eye toward working with professional institutions.

The next grade could use a combination of information sources to infer population status. The auratus and pumilio guides on websites are quite good and are really a formalized version of the travelogues I mentioned before. It allows you to match up frogs based on appearance to rough population groups like Bastimentos, Bri bri, or Toboga Island for auratus. There is also importation/shipment information that can provide clues on a frogs origins. It is also reasonable that frogs from the same shipment are more likely to come from the same population than frogs that were from different shipments (one from Panama and one from Nicaragua for example). Of course being from the same shipment doesn't guarantee they are from the same population but it's a clue that can help seggregate frogs at least enough to maintain some natural variability and still retain geographic uniqueness (a.k.a. wild type). Finally there is the frogs captive lineage. There are lines of frogs whose wild origins can't even be pinned down to a country but their lineage in captivity documented enough that we are pretty confident they represent "some wild population" even if we don't know the location of that population. The French Guiana vents might be a good example since I've heard speculation that these didn't come from Guiana at all yet, there are a few lines that have been bred true through the years. We might not know where they come from but it's a good bet there are little frogs somewhere in the tropics that look and act like these little buggers.

Finally there is the general grade that we really don't know much about at all. They could be species hybrids, morph hybrids, or just frogs whose lineage is a complete mystery. They still might be nice little frogs that provide a lot of enjoyment but they wouldn't be suitable breeding stock for maintaining wild type lines.

Overall I don't think these would be difficult classes to maintain and they represent what I think could be done with the types of information currently available. But if we start to request and demand more information about the origins of new frogs brought in, the quality of information and what we can do towards maintaining wild type specimens will only improve.

 

[bbrock]

I would now consider myself an outsider to the hobby, but my roots have come from it. I see the hobby giving more and more importance to locality specific animals in the future.

Well you can pretend to be an outsider all you want but you are one of us. How's the dome? Itchy?

Justin makes some great points as usual. I think as people like him and other serious hobbyist collect information about morphs in the wild and make contact with people working with frogs at the export end, we'll start to see better locality data for the frogs. If the suppliers know that the market is asking for locality data, I think they will supply it. Approaching the CITES committee might be worth a shot but I don't hold much hope for them getting on board. Managing the treaty is a huge job and requiring locality data is a wee bit outside of their scope. I'm guessing they would consider their job stopping at regulating how many of what species come out of which countries. If animals are to go into a conservation program, it has generally been up to the parties involved in that program to obtain adequate data with their specimens. One tact with CITES might be to describe it as a way to more finely track harvest pressures but given that most countries can't even track their whole country, it is probably asking too much. Nice thought though.

 

[bbrock]

I would treat them as WC if they ever came in again. I, as well as the gov't consider them endemic species now. I think they are now significantly different than the founder population, and that's where I base my decision on that. I don't consider them hybrids or any bit less worthy than any other population.
j

On the other hand it is clear that the genetics of the Hawaiian frogs are a subset of those found on Taboga. I could see it played either way. You could either maintain the Hawaiians separate or mix the with Toboga since I don't think you are polluting the Toboga line with really anything new. Keeping them separate is probably the safest bet though. There is no way to unmix genes.

Interesting that Hawaii considers these "endemic species" since that requires a redefinition of the word endemic. Endemics are considered species or subspecies found in an area but nowhere else. At best these are a naturalized or feral introduced species. Unfortunately there are negative connotations with the word feral since many of the species we are most familiar with also cause ecological problems but many feral species settle in nicely to native communities without problems.

 

[bbrock]

Re: You know Justin I don't know.

I do not want to see frogs broken down into lines of championships. The breeding lines would get too thin with people trying to establish the standard and repeating it. And that's not what it is about. Its about having good healthy frogs.

That's right. In fact, the guidelines would be designed specifically to AVOID developing appearance standards which is unfortunately the natural direction that breeding takes. We tend to look at our frogs and choose the most similar looking specimens to breed with each other. Hobbyists often see differences in color, pattern, or size and assume that these differences much represent different "morphs" so they separate according to these differences to produce new lines of completely invented morphs. This leads to the cloneification of lines in captivity while populations in the wild show a good deal of variability. The breeding guidelines would give guidance on things like optimum founding population size, degree of line breeding/outcrossing, number of breeding colonies to maintain stability in the hobby, and guidance for determining what population a frog really belongs to. The result should be frogs that exhibit variability more like what is found in the wild without destroying the unique characters of a particular population.

Following liniage is a good start. But I don't think I can go back that far. Maybe my F1's to the P1's parents but that is it. And although I do not have any, what about wild caughts?
Dave

Few of us can trace our frogs back to the "promised land". But that's not necessary to maintain what I suggest as a hobbyist grade line. For example, the thin-lined vittatus that were once considered lugubris before I had their DNA sequenced can be traced to a breeder importer who sold frogs to Mike Shrom but not back to their location of origin. That's okay though because that's enough information to link all the frogs to a common origin and maintain them as a distinct line. These frogs are widely distributed in the hobby and at least several breeders have been maintaining them true to their line. A few IAD's back, Brian Kubicki looked at the frogs and even thought he knew approximately where they might have originated from as he had seen similar vittatus in CR smacked up against the mountains separating vittatus from lugubris if I remember right which is cool to think about in its own right. So despite not being able to trace the frogs all the way back to locality, I think there is a pretty convincing line of evidence that these frogs hail from a different genetic population than the more typical vittatus with wider stripes.

In some ways I think WC are even easier because you can often tie the animals to a particular shipment or importation. For example the blue jeans pumilio that came in from Nicaragua in 2000. A number of people got them and several are still floating around alive. It seems likely that these animals all came from the same wild population so that group of shipments makes a convenient glue to base a line on. Of course this line might be too narrow since blue jeans may actually be one very large population that stretches from Nicaragua through much of CR but it will be easy to expand the line later if Justin or one of our other tropics-trekking experts tells us to. It is much more difficult to "unhybridize" a line. What I'd like to see in the guidelines is a formalized approach to using the various forms of information available to determine where breeding line designations should be formed. It would be really nice to have a worksheet you could walk through that could help guide determinations of genetic lines.

So the upshot is that its important to distinguish that we are wanting to develop breeding guidelines and NOT breeding standards. Rather than dictating what the animals should look like, we are developing practices that would produce animals that should look similar to a wild population, whatever that appearance might be. Notice that oddball animals are pretty well covered under this model. An oddball would be culled only if it is likely that natural selection in the wild would have taken it out of the breeding population. Otherwise, the oddball is treated just like any other member of the population so those genes get masked and unmasked at some frequency similar to what happens in the wild.

Finally, I would include parental care behavior in the guidelines. Parental care in dendrobatids is certainly one of the more interesting aspects of these animals and it would be ashame to lose these traits in captivity. Logic suggests that at best artificially rearing eggs and tads eliminates selection for parental care and at worst actually selects against parental care. That doesn't mean the froglets produced are less healthy but I would argue that a frog that has lost parental care is less interesting than one that retains it. Two suggestions have been proposed on frognet to address this. One is to place a premium on "naturally reared" animals. The second is to batch test lines for parental care. I proposed that guidelines suggest testing lines every third generation for the persistance of parental care. This would simply require setting up frogs every third generation in a vivarium with sufficient tad deposition/rearing sites and letting the adults just do their thing to see if they can successfully care for the eggs and transport the tads (or feed eggs in the case of facultative and obligate egg feeders). Three generations is arbitrary but seems reasonable in that it allows a lot of offspring produced without testing but if a line is found to have lost behaviors, you can usually find animals still living 3 generations back to fall back on to reestablish the behavior. Personally I think placing a premium on parent-raised froglets is much easier and more interesting but flexibility is good too.

 

[bbrock]

My usage of the English language has dimishished since my locks where shorn...

Should we call you Samson? I knew you knew the difference, I just couldn't resist giving you a little more grief.

 

[bbrock]

and told me when he had to move them from one tank to another his hands started burning.

If mine jump on the soft skin of my arm, it burns a little too. Mine are at least 3 generations from wc. Even though the "important" toxins are lost in cb, I suspect there are still many compounds in the skin that are irritants.

 

[bbrock]

Re: E. silverstonei

Epipeds seem more dependent on diet for color than some other darts.

Pumilio also seem to be somewhat diet dependent. It's interesting that many red types of pumilio morph out brightly colored and then fade if the diet is not right for maintaining color. Other pumilio come out almost brown but color up with beta carotene or canthaxanthine (sp?). Orange and red bastis seem to fade to a still attractive yellow while blue jeans and bri bri become a not very attractive brownish orange.

Also good is a wide range of food if you can, especially field sweepings. The more complete the diet, the brighter the frog. In the US the idea doesn't seem as popular for some reason (more effort?) as I've gotten critisism for doing this, but its done in europe, and the field sweepings seem to help.

You won't get any argument from me! When it's practicle, meadow sweeps are the ultimate food source in my book. They aren't much work either if done right.

 

[bbrock]

Re: Morphs variations can of worms...

This is mostly based off my ideas about bestimentos pumilio, so they are gonna be my main example. Ok, so the red bastimentos (not talking orange red to yellow ones, I'm talking RED) are supposidly a distinct bastimentos form on the island going by others' observations (it came up last time I had a go around with this idea). Going by ideas brought up here, you breed red to red as thats what they do in the wild. What about the other bastimentos?

In my opinion bastis are the poster child for what breeding guidelines would be meant to do. I agree with you 100% that many of the basti "morphs" should be thrown together. Let's assume Summers is right and bastis exhibit sexual selection for similar looking frogs. I have no reason to doubt this although I haven't read the paper myself so can't comment on the strength of the stats. Regardless, how strong of a genetic isolator would sexual selection on an island population be? There is no way that sexual selection is creating an absolute barrier in the basti population. Just look at the gradation of morphs on the island. We aren't talking about 2, 3, 4, or more distinct color morphs. What we have is a continuous range of morps. This alone is strong evidence for an interbreeding population. If the frogs were segregating absolutely, then we would see a set of distinct morphs that could somewhat easily be placed into categories. But that's not what we have. We have all of these in between frogs that are difficult to say whether they belong to one morph or another so we continue to subdivide into more and more "morph" names to accomodate this variation.

Now if we think about the mechanism of sexual selection, this variation due to interbreeding becomes even more clear. Let's assume the female is responsible for choosing the mate. Her choice is limited to the number of sexually mature males within her territory. I have no idea how many males that might be but it's safe to assume that the number is less than the total number of males on the island. So from this group of males she has to choose a male that looks most similar to her. It's unlikely that she will find a mate that looks exactly like herself so what are her limits? What does she do if she can't find a similar enough looking male? Does she obstain from reproducing or does she just choose the closest match? My bet is that she mates with the closest match. The closeness of this match may be limited by her potential mates. Next we should consider what is her range of detection? By this I mean what are her limits to determining if a potential mate looks "like her". When we segregate these frogs into morph classes, we do so somewhat arbitrarily. We look at the frog and then consider the number of morphs that are recognized by others and we put the frog into whatever class we think it most closely fits. So how many "morphs" do you suppose our female frog recognizes? What range of color, pattern, or call do you suppose she considers the same. Surely she has a little lattitude in this choice. Otherwise she would probably only find very closely related frogs to be suitable mates. The obvious answer here is that there is a range of variability within these choices. An orange frog may mate with a slightly more red or yellow frog, the offspring of that pairing would do the same and so on which still yields a population of continously variable frogs despite sexual selection for similar looking mates.

So as far as your experiment goes, I'm all for it. I would love to see froggers more willing to mix different morphs of frogs that come from a common population. In this case it would be particularly interesting to see how sexual selection might affect the outcome.

 

[bbrock]

But then again, it could just be evolution.
Hurry up and do your study, Kansas may be removing evolution from public schools again, so that theory won't work here anymore before long

You'd better start practicing up on dragging your knuckles again!

 

[bbrock]

I thought this thread had died and quit following it over a month ago. Glad to see it still had some life. I'm not sure we need to have the majority of breeders onboard with the guidelines but we certainly need most of the key breeders onboard. I think most of them are sympathetic, if not downright excited, about the idea but many are worried about broadcasting specifics about what they have in their collections for a variety of reasons. The guidelines are not that difficult. They are a set of rules that breeders voluntarily sign on to follow. Not all frogs in a collection have to be produced using the guidelines but we should have some way to feel confident that when someone claims a batch of frogs are produced following the guidelines, that they really are. It will be a challenge to develop guidelines with a team of people over the Internet though. This would be a good topic for a working group or panel discussion at IAD, Frog Day, or NWFF. Several years ago a group of us led a panel discussion on the registry. Although attendence for the panel really sucked, some very good discussion came out of it. I wrote up a summary of the discussion and posted on frognet and that became the catalyst for the effort that has continued slowly since then. The panel provided enough interactive discussion to at least clarify what the issues and challenges were going to be to tackle the problem. I think the guidelines would be much simpler. If we could get a few people to do some homework ahead of time, I think draft guidelines might be hammered out in a good solid day of discussion. Two things that come to mind for preparation are for someone to obtain and become familiar with the killifish breeding standards and the second is to have someone familiar with the AZA ISIS system. I have an idea who we could get for ISIS.