# Hybridize or not to Hybridize



## Dendrobatid (May 6, 2010)

Hello Everyone,
Just want to clearly state that I'm not posting this for people to debate the issue. I'm just looking for the individual reasoning behind the thought of so many individuals on here that are so vehement against breeding one locale of a species to another locale of that same species. For some a hybrid would mean a cross between different species, for example: D. auratus x D. leucomelas. This is not what I'm referring to as a hybrid. I'm asking why do you personally feel that it's wrong to breed animals that taxonomists feel are the same species, for example: O. pumilio that show a ton of phenotypic variation within a species. I'm not saying that I believe in this type of hybridization, just very curious to understand what thoughts people on here have. Thanks in advance for your input. Again please try to refrain from quoting someone and bashing their opinion. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. Lumpers and splitters are all welcome here!

Thanks,

Jim


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## evolvstll (Feb 17, 2007)

Here are the search results for my past posts regarding your question:

http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/search.php?searchid=1367935

here is another post following up on some of the above threads:

Dart Den • Login


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## Dendro Dave (Aug 2, 2005)

Most of the reasons given against hybrids in general are valid even when its the same species just different locales. I think one of the biggest reasons to avoid it is the hobby has essentially put its foot down with the majority of the people involved saying "Hey we want these animals to represent to the best of our ability what is found in the wild, and if we are buying a specific locale we want to be sure thats the locale we get...not a mix of 2 locales". 

So basically anyone who proceeds to mix locales is giving the middle finger to the rest of the hobby and saying I don't care what you want... I wan't this, and my desire is more important then the collective desire of 100's or 1000's of others. Fundamentally a fairly selfish position if you ask me. 

Every time someone does that it begins to be a little more acceptable in the eyes of some, and eventually when we buy an animal hoping for a specific locale, hope may be all we have and can no longer be fairly sure that what we want to buy is actually what we get when people start releasing all kinds of crossed locales into the hobby. 

Especially with frogs that have highly distinctive morphs like Tincs and Pumilio, if this becomes an accepted practice, you could never be sure what you bought was what you got, and you'd probably end up with designer morphs and then we'd be just like the general cluster #^@& that is the leopard gecko hobby where finding something that truly represents the wild populations is nearly impossible and most people could care less about the integrity of the animal and all flock to the newest Frankenstein created.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dendrobatid said:


> This is not what I'm referring to as a hybrid. I'm asking why do you personally feel that it's wrong to breed animals that taxonomists feel are the same species, for example: O. pumilio that show a ton of phenotypic variation within a species. I'm not saying that I believe in this type of hybridization, just very curious to understand what thoughts people on here have. Thanks in advance for your input. Again please try to refrain from quoting someone and bashing their opinion. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. Lumpers and splitters are all welcome here!


It also helps if you use the correct terminology.. this is not what is commonly considered to be hybridization when disscussing animals (it is with plants), this is more correctly referred to as crossbreeding. These are stable genetic variations that are the result of one or more pressures at a locality (often mate choice (see http://web.utk.edu/~bfitzpa1/reynolds_fitzpatrick_2007.pdf as one example)). These variations are lost once the frogs are crossed resulting in the generation of offspring that may appear as one or more of the parental types (depending if this was a simple cross or a complex cross over generations) resulting in the visual reassignment as the parental morph by hobbyists who aquire the frogs down the road (see the identification thread for multiple discussions on I got this frog as xyz and I think it is abc instead). 
On a different note, crosses between the morphs can bring outbreeding depression into play depending on how the local populations diverge from one another. This is an issue as it can take as many as 5 generations to become apparent at which point a large section of the animals in the hobby can be affected by it. (see for example, http://www.uow.edu.au/science/biol/...outbreeding depression in the common frog.pdf). Outbreeding depression is a greater risk for species that show strong locality adaptation, which is typified by many dendrobatids, than for those species that do not show strong locality adaptations. 

However, this does not mean that various morphs should not be reviewed to determine if they were artificially seperated from a population and then selectively bred for certain traits (example, fine spot, and sky blue azureus were selectively bred from the azureus population as a whole), and potentially managed as one whole population to prevent inbreeding depression from becoming an issue. 

Some comments,

Ed


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## Reef_Haven (Jan 19, 2011)

Ed said:


> However, this does not mean that various morphs should not be reviewed to determine if they were artificially seperated from a population and then selectively bred for certain traits (example, fine spot, and sky blue azureus were selectively bred from the azureus population as a whole), and potentially managed as one whole population to prevent inbreeding depression from becoming an issue.
> 
> Ed


I'm a little confused about this. 
The exmaples I would point out are Robins Egg Blue, Blue Microspot.
Are they not true morfs?
Were they just Blue Auratus that had a certain trait, were culled for that trait and bred to continue to produce that trait?
I guess what I mean is did some of the first F1's show anything other than these traits and were culled, or will they breed True?


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## skylsdale (Sep 16, 2007)

Reef_Haven said:


> I'm a little confused about this.
> The exmaples I would point out are Robins Egg Blue, Blue Microspot.
> Are they not true morfs?
> Were they just Blue Auratus that had a certain trait, were culled for that trait and bred to continue to produce that trait?
> I guess what I mean is did some of the first F1's show anything other than these traits and were culled, or will they breed True?


As Ed said above, knowing the correct terms helps in conversations like this.

A "morph" is simply a physical representation of something...so yes, "Microspot" would be a morph...but so would any frog, really, because it's a physical type or phenotype of an organism. A better word might be "form" or "example." However, some people use the term incorrectly to refer to an isolated breeding population or other such thing...so, for example, when someone refers to the "Red morph" of pumilio from Escudo de Veraguas, some people think there is a seperate breeding population of predominantly red frogs on that island...when, in actuality, the entire population is just one mixed population. The person is just, confusingly, pointing our a red individual...a red morph/form.

In your question above you are actually referring to the issue of selective breeding, not hybridizing or even crossbreeding, necessarily. And to answer your question: yes, the examples you list above were traits of a few individuals, as I understand it, that were selectively bred together with individuals that had the same trait in order to increase the frequency of that phenotype.


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## Reef_Haven (Jan 19, 2011)

Thanks,
So will No Dot Citronellas, only produce no dot or just have a higher frequency of no dots?


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## heatfreakk3 (Oct 15, 2008)

No dots have a higher frequency of producing no dots, but don't always produce no dots. It's just more likely than cits with dots to produce no dots.


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## Dendrobatid (May 6, 2010)

I think that Ed makes a very good point about the way definitions are commonly used. This is the definition of a 

Hybrid: the offspring of two animals or plants of different breeds, varieties, species, or genera, especially as produced through human manipulation for specific genetic characteristics. 

So I'm curious if breeding two pumilio together, that from a Taxonomic standpoint are considered the same species considered hybridizing? 

That being said, Am I to understand that the majority of people on DB feel that selective breeding for for a certain phenotype is ok, but breeding frogs that are the same species but just from different locals is a no no. 

Let me reiterate that I'm really just trying to understand how this plays into conservation.

We are concerned that if by some miracle we were asked to reintroduce a species to a location were it was eradicated. That we want to be absolutely sure that the animal is the one that originally came from there. But it would be ok to reintroduce a animal that was selectively bred for a certain color variation?

I'm honestly just trying to understand the thought processes here. I'm really not trying to create conflict.


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## SmackoftheGods (Jan 28, 2009)

Dendrobatid said:


> I think that Ed makes a very good point about the way definitions are commonly used. This is the definition of a
> 
> Hybrid: the offspring of two animals or plants of different breeds, varieties, species, or genera, especially as produced through human manipulation for specific genetic characteristics.
> 
> ...


Respectable hobbyists are just as concerned about line breeding as they are hybridized and outcrossed frogs. All are big no-nos.

There was once the idea that should the wild populations die off there would be some big reintroduction project and we need to keep morphs pure. Most have abandoned this type of idea, especially considering that a vast majority of the frog populations in captivity are not suitable for a reintroduction project.

There are many reasons that are discussed ad nauseum across the board for keeping morphs separated. The most legitimate, to me, are as follows: generally (note that I'm not using the words "exclusively" or "universally") the dart frog hobby seeks to display their animals as closely to those that would appear in the wild. Because true morphs (not artificial morphs as Ed has already discussed) are isolated populations, true morphs would not have the opportunity to interbreed with one another. Also, there's already a hard enough time trying to identify dart frogs just by looking at them, sometimes a hybridized or outcrossed frog will obviously be a hybridized or outcrossed frog, but all too often everything gets convoluted and you just can't seem to figure out if it's an outcrossed frog or a pure bred.... This doesn't bode well with many hobbyists.

I'm currently trying to sift through some papers Ed sent to me about possible genetic detriment caused by outcrossing animals (particularly anurans), but haven't read enough to be able to properly summarize it... looks like there may be significant scientific evidence for thise, though.


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## Dendrobatid (May 6, 2010)

Jake,
That was very well said!
Thanks,
Jim


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dendrobatid said:


> Hybrid: the offspring of two animals or plants of different breeds, varieties, species, or genera, especially as produced through human manipulation for specific genetic characteristics.
> 
> So I'm curious if breeding two pumilio together, that from a Taxonomic standpoint are considered the same species considered hybridizing?
> 
> That being said, Am I to understand that the majority of people on DB feel that selective breeding for for a certain phenotype is ok, but breeding frogs that are the same species but just from different locals is a no no.


Your definition includes two different breeds which is incorrect .. See this defintion from wikipedia Crossbreed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 



Dendrobatid said:


> Let me reiterate that I'm really just trying to understand how this plays into conservation.
> 
> We are concerned that if by some miracle we were asked to reintroduce a species to a location were it was eradicated. That we want to be absolutely sure that the animal is the one that originally came from there. But it would be ok to reintroduce a animal that was selectively bred for a certain color variation?


One of the greatest problems with reintroductions of captive bred animals is adaptation to captivity. This is due to the shift towards genes that enable adaption and success in captivity but are significant negative traits for survivial in wild populations. See for example Genetic adaptation to captivity in species conservation programs . Animals that have been bred for specific traits are probably going to have even more genetic adaptations that prevent successful reintroductions. Even in captive animals not deliberately selected for certain traits, adaptation to captivity can rapidly occur as fast as one generation due to the failure to adapt to captivity in the original animals. Even those species that were not specifically bred for novel traits will accumulate changes that while not deleterious to the captive animals are deleterious to the wild populations. These problems are significant enough that care must be used when using captive bred animals to bolster surplus populations as these changes can reduce survivorship and fitness of the wild populations. (see for example http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/fish415/Wilhelm files/Araki et al trout reproduction.pdf ). 

Overall in the hobby there is little to no managing of the populations for genetic diversity, to prevent inbreeding depression, or the accumulation for genetic adaptation to captivity.. and this is before we look at the risk of novel pathogen introduction into the wild, and/ hybrids (accidental or otherwise). A further complication is that releases of animals that are not adapted to the pathogens/parasites from thier native locality tend to suffer extreme mortality upon release. This mortality can reach 100%. All of this leads to the probability that any frog in the hobby would not be even considered for release programs, even in the case of extinction. 

Ed


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## EvilLost (Jan 10, 2011)

Very well said, Ed.

However, I would like to point out that even if these species are completely wiped out from nature, it is VERY unlikely that any hobbyists/activists will reintroduce them (even discounting the adaptation issues).

The problem here is that major zoos around the world have already begun an animal DNA database for just this situation (I know the San Diego Zoo has them, especially in the case of their 3 last white rhinos who will not breed and WILL go extinct once these last 3 die. SD Zoo has their DNA "on file" for future cloning). 

However, we have to consider this: If these animals are completely wiped from the wild; WHERE are we going to "reintroduce" them to?? The future of nature is in our hands, and it IS going to get wiped out. In my personal opinion, I believe hope rests on us to be able to create ARTIFICIAL habitats in which these animals thrive in order to continue their existence if and when we get to the day that they are entirely wiped out in the wild.

All that considered though, I see ABSOLUTELY NO reason why this "true morph" debate exists. Honestly, lets even say we are going to reintroduce them.....why do they have to be the exact true morphs found in the wild today? They don't. 

We are trying to plan on a way to recreate the world exactly as it was before after we destroy it. IMO this is a stupid plan. I don't see anything wrong with having crossbred or otherwise frogs even if in the future we are going to reintroduce them into (an artificial) wild. No matter how we spin it, our future reintroduction will in essence be in a "giant vivarium" and I'm sure we will have to monitor much more than simply the frogs anyway....

Although the point of hobbysists wanting true breeds and KNOWING what you are buying is a very very valid....I do not find the "saving the envinroment" argument to be valid at all when it comes to the specificity of frog locales.


In short: So what if we don't reintroduce the same frogs to the same locales after we have destroyed those locales?? Once the environment is gone, we have to create a false one for them anyway so why does it matter?!?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

EvilLost said:


> The problem here is that major zoos around the world have already begun an animal DNA database for just this situation (I know the San Diego Zoo has them, especially in the case of their 3 last white rhinos who will not breed and WILL go extinct once these last 3 die. SD Zoo has their DNA "on file" for future cloning).


The issue with this is that if you don't have a host to carry the clone to term, you still have lost the animal permanently so there is an incentive to maintain a surrogate species. 



EvilLost said:


> However, we have to consider this: If these animals are completely wiped from the wild; WHERE are we going to "reintroduce" them to?? The future of nature is in our hands, and it IS going to get wiped out. In my personal opinion, I believe hope rests on us to be able to create ARTIFICIAL habitats in which these animals thrive in order to continue their existence if and when we get to the day that they are entirely wiped out in the wild.


This position ignores history... in the US for example, many of the eastern states were over 95% clear cut at one point or another including ecosystems considered to be fragile or sensitive, yet the animals known to be at the greatest impact of clear cutting are still present with good genetic diversity (example woodland caudates). Even in Central America we have seen this pattern repeated (the collapse of the Mayan civilization is believed to be due to deforestation) yet the species are still present. This is a common occurance in the transition to modern world economies.. 

This also ignores how well switching 3rd world policies from strict regimented preservationist policies to those of a sustainable use conservation program can change the loss of habitat. 

The current SSP programs in Zoos are based on a 100-200 year "ARK" time line as that is based not only on the prediction that human population growth will stabilize, the technology to freeze and recover viable animal gametes will be much better but habitat destruction should change (and this model doesn't take into the account the impact the switch to sustainable use conservation programs is having). 

For those with access I suggest reviewing Conservation of Exploited Species; 2001; Cambridge University Press and a number of relevent articles in International Zoo Yearbook such as Lees, C. M.; Wilcken, J.; 2009; Sustaining the ark: the challenge faced by zoos in maintaining viable populations; International Zoo Yearbook 43: 6-18. 

Ed


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## Dendrobatid (May 6, 2010)

EvilLost said:


> Very well said, Ed.
> 
> 
> The problem here is that major zoos around the world have already begun an animal DNA database for just this situation (I know the San Diego Zoo has them, especially in the case of their 3 last white rhinos who will not breed and WILL go extinct once these last 3 die. SD Zoo has their DNA "on file" for future cloning).
> ...


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

I didn't add this to the post above as I didn't want to make it overylong. 

One of the reasons it is important to maintain the true morphs is because once they are crossed, they are gone and as we have seen in other species (and even in dart frogs), this increases demand for wild caught animals which with only a few exceptions are not managed in a manner that supports conservation. This increased demand also increases demand for smuggled animals which can help push both local and species extinctions (see for example PLoS Biology: Rarity Value and Species Extinction: The Anthropogenic Allee Effect ). 

Conservation can be broadly defined as “The artificial control of ecological relationships in an environment in order to maintain a particular balance among the species present” (Allabay, 1992). This definition covers the use of strict preservation policies (legal protection of ecosystems and/or animals) to sustainable use of ecosystems and/or animal. Unfortunately the way in which the frogs are managed in general by the hobby does not support conservation as boom and bust cycles of populations due to popularity cycles, visual assigment of morphs by visual determination for breeding, deliberate pairing based on visual aesthetics, all can contribute to changes in genetic diversity which can cause issues with inbreeding and outbreeding which in turn drives further importation of wild caught frogs. (And this is before we get to the demand for new types/morphs or species or species that are rare in captivity or considered "high status".)With the notable exception of one or two actual programs, very little of the actual hobby trade goes into actual conservation programs. There is a potential for some impact if surplus from the hobby is used to offset demand for wild caught animals in the larger hobby. As an example, it can be demonstrated that Dendrobates auratus has been captive breed since at least the early 1980s (See American Dendrobatid News Letter or Breeding Terrarium Animals, Zimmerman, TFH Publications) yet thousands of auratus have been imported in that same time line. 

Ed


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