# inbreeding depression in dart frogs



## KCS2015 (Oct 28, 2015)

It will likely be a while before I try to breed my leucomelas frogs since I am in the midst of building them a new viv and I want them to get good and settled in before going there. I do want to breed them in the spring however. I was reading last night about there being almost no inbreeding depression in darts due to them having nearly identical genetic makeup. Is this true? On one hand I would love to have a small colony of leucs that came from my own breeding but on the other hand I want to be able to sell extras since I won't have the room for more than a few in a 40B. Is it even ethical to sell or give away inbred leucs? I am not looking to get rich exactly from breeding them. If it were up to me I would keep every one I produced.  I just want what is best for the frogs which is why I want to know this from now. 

P.S. Almost forgot to add the two I have now are not related but if they breed and I keep the offspring in the same viv then they will likely breed back to the parents or to each other. I would assume the max I could have in there would be 4 to maybe 6.


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## greenthumbs (Nov 6, 2015)

From my understanding breeding the offspring of two unrelated frogs doesn't cause many problems.


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## alogan (Jan 7, 2013)

It shouldnt cause any issues breeding two inbreds from a different lineage, not that I suggest doing it on purpose. Inbreeding selects (increases the likelihood) for various deleterious alleles, and by breeding with an unrelated individual these alleles are less likely to occur in a bad combination. In domestic animals they will breed out from two inbred lineages and get what is known as "hybrid vigor," which is a genetically better individual since it doesn't have all of the potentially bad alleles.


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

There's not really any documented evidence for hybrid vigor in dart frogs, unless you have a strong source for that I'd be leery of making that claim. There is definitely evidence to suggest that in-situ hybrid frogs are in fact LESS fit than non-hybrids however.


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

Inbreeding can also get rid of deleterious alleles over generations of culling any deleterious alleles that pop up. 
I haven't seen any evidence that hybrids are less vigorous in captivity just that they produced a statistically insignifagant number more malformations.
This can change from generation to generation and some individuals can be more fit in captivity. At least that's what I've garnered from what I've read. And some crosses could fix the hybrid vigor traits, teh work just hsn't been done in dart frogs so no one can say one way or another.


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

Roadrunner said:


> I haven't seen any evidence that hybrids are less vigorous in captivity just that they produced a statistically insignifagant number more malformations.
> This can change from generation to generation and some individuals can be more fit in captivity. At least that's what I've garnered from what I've read. And some crosses could fix the hybrid vigor traits, teh work just hsn't been done in dart frogs so no one can say one way or another.


If it can't be said one way or the other, why are you presenting it as positive? How can it be statistically 'insignificant' if there are no statistics?


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

Dane said:


> If it can't be said one way or the other, why are you presenting it as positive? How can it be statistically 'insignificant' if there are no statistics?


Because people shouldn't put all their eggs in one basket. That's a negative to me.

It's from the papers i've seen posted listing outbreeding depression with statistics in teh papers. They said the differences were statistically insignificant. hence the "from what I've read".


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## tardis101 (Apr 11, 2012)

Small numbers of founding individuals, are likely to lead to inbreeding depression. Regardless of if the individuals are from a limited number of original imports from the wild or from someone's own personal collection. The same reason you don't want closely related humans to produce offspring would apply here as well.


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## macuser (Oct 8, 2015)

Roadrunner said:


> Because people shouldn't put all their eggs in one basket. That's a negative to me.


i agree with you if mixing morphs was done in a controlled environment by professionals in a lab setting for research purposes. i dont think every hobbyist should start mixing morphs because it'll make it more difficult to find pure breds in 100 years. it will also decrease the already finite supply of pure bred morphs which makes it even more likely for the morph to go extinct because of inbreeding depression. outbreeding really should be done as a last resort and if professionals already did the research then we'd be in a better position to take on the challenge of saving frogs from extinction.


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