# Renown Bloodlines?



## porkchop (Aug 29, 2005)

I have been a little curious how bloodlines become so renown? I know Sens line, Nabors, Kelley all have desirable lines that people desire or recognize as a superior or fine bloodline. *What is it that makes a bloodline so popular or desirable?* I imagine it has to start with an WC or F1 and grow from there, but what are some things or characteristics that end up setting them apart from all the rest?
Anyone?


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## elmoisfive (Dec 31, 2004)

Probably the most important attribute is that those bloodlines came to be established in the hobby, were successfully propagated and most importantly tracked. A spectacular bloodline that goes nowhere or becomes muddied with lack of data or mixing with undefined frogs loses much of its value.

In addition, overall appearance of the frogs (imitators come to mind) can be a strong differentiating feature to some although personally I think that hobbyists can split hairs far too much in this dimension.

Bill


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## porkchop (Aug 29, 2005)

So i am assuming you mean a WC pair comes in and produces nice froglets, they get out to the hobbiest, and if enough people through out the hobby obtain them and keep the line clean, and tracked clean, then you make a name for yourself?
Funny you should mention Imi's, i have Sens & Nabors and the markings are quite diff, i am able to tell them apart that way for sure, *atleast in my case, *my Sens have more of a mirrored pattern on each side, where as my Nabors line is more erratic, as in this pic. Sens being on the left.


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## elmoisfive (Dec 31, 2004)

Alternatively cb frogs are imported into this country from Europe and become established as a line.

Bill


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## porkchop (Aug 29, 2005)

right, ya i can see that too, doesn't have to be WC.
just has to keep clean here in states and get out there then ?


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## Homer (Feb 15, 2004)

Bloodlines, as commonly used in the hobby, means that a frog can trace its lineage back to a WC or unrelated pair that is owned or was imported by a particular person (Alex Sens, Patrick Nabors, etc.). So, all frogs from that bloodline trace their lineage back to that person, and all frogs in that bloodline are related to one another, because they can trace their "family tree" back to a founding pair that was imported or bred by that person (realize that one person could have several unrelated bloodlines for any given species or morph if they have several wc pairs).

Some people in the hobby, out of fear of crossing one locale type with another, will only breed individuals of one "bloodline" to individuals of the same line. This absolutely ensures that you are not crossing two populations of a species, but it also is a form of "line breeding" or inbreeding that might cause potential problems as generations of inbreeding go on.

You can also use bloodline information to ensure that you don't cross two related animals with one another. So, I'm not sure I would call certain bloodlines "renowned," it's more or less that for many species or morphs, there are only a few originating pairs from a particular person or persons that have produced most of the frogs that are in the hobby today.

With that said, there are some "lines" of frogs that show different physical traits from other "lines" of the same species in the hobby (blue legs vs. green, etc.). This may be due to the fact that one line is actually a different locale or morph than another, or it may simply be because the founding stock had those genes, and the founding stock from other bloodlines did not.

I hope that gives you a starting place for answering your question, as it's really just an overview, and their might be other people using the term bloodline differently.

Edit: Wow, you guys covered a lot of ground while I was typing this. Sorry if I have now just been redundant with Bill's information.


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## porkchop (Aug 29, 2005)

I think i get the just of it, I was just wondering how people get their names associated with a specie. I crossed my Imi line of Sens & Nabors and was told that is ok, as long as i know what their origin is and passing along that info. to any hobbiest who would obtain them.


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Moved this to advanced...


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## porkchop (Aug 29, 2005)

ahhh... thank you, i thought about putting it there myself, but wanted a definate reply, and thought i might get i in Q & A.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "I crossed my Imi line of Sens & Nabors and was told that is ok, as long as i know what their origin is and passing along that info. to "endsnip


This is exactly why people track the bloodlines. These were from different imports and possibly different localities which is why people interested in keeping them seperate. By breeding them together you have eliminated them from being either of those lines and you now have imitators of mixed origins. Mixing these is along the same lines as interbreeding tinct morphs. 

Ed


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

well, just paint us into a corner ed. we cant condone smuggling(even if there habitat is on the way out or chytrid is eminent and the government just dont care) and there are only a few lines of any type of dart in the hobby(1 for most) but you dont want to cross lines but you dont want to line breed and zoos arent supposed to give out there stock. we`re pretty much &**(*( as a group trying to accomplish something then.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

The hobby has no one to blame but itself for these problems. 

With most of the lines, the original founding stock consists of more than one pair, and what people need/needed to do is maintain the representation of the genetic diversity of the line as opposed to allowing the lines to die out and then trying to bolster them by outcrossing to different localities or lines. This is where the hobby tends to fall flat on its face, as the popularity of a frog increases and decreases people get out of the frogs and get rid of them causing a loss of diversity. 

Look at all of the E. tricolor that were lost as an example. 

When dealing with this form of line breeding, the way to resolve some of the gene loss is to get frogs from that line from a different person unless your frogs from that line have dominated the hobby and then we are screwed.... 

There isn't a difference between interbreeding lines of known importation than in breeding different natural color morphs (this does not include artificially maintained morphs like fine spotted azureus) as the genetic variation between those sites can be as significant. 

I am not painting us into a corner, the hobby has been painting itself into that corner for years, I am simply the person turning on the light and pointing out that people are painting their way into the corner..... 

Ed


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## sports_doc (Nov 15, 2004)

Ed said:


> snip "I crossed my Imi line of Sens & Nabors and was told that is ok, as long as i know what their origin is and passing along that info. to "endsnip
> 
> 
> This is exactly why people track the bloodlines. These were from different imports and possibly different localities which is why people interested in keeping them seperate. By breeding them together you have eliminated them from being either of those lines and you now have imitators of mixed origins. Mixing these is along the same lines as interbreeding tinct morphs.
> ...


Yes Ed, but in reality we buy 6 frogs from one source, grow them up, breed the sibblings, sell them in groups, they breed the siblings...in the end all the frogs will have one eye in the middle of their heads :? 

Everyone's too reluctant to interbreed...we assume that in the wild the frogs are following the same rules, or are unable to interbreed b/c of geographic isolation...but in most cases this is simply an assumption...not necessarily a truth (as it might be known for a tinc morph in contrary)

It is possible (not saying probably)... but... one line (importation of said species A) is brought in and called line A and Line B is then brought in and guess what...both came from Europe where lines were mixed, -or- lines may have actually been the same...but we wish to keep them separate so as not to confuse matters...this effort may be futile though...the origin of the "lines" could have simply been a few months apart in importation, for instance.

they eventually may even look different, b/c sure my brothers kids dont look exactly like mine, nor would they 10 generations later if my kids inbred (line A) and his kids inbred (line B)...

so really are we following a scientific method or just kidding ourselves?

just another perspective..."devil's advocate"  for fun...

...in the meantime I have my suarian intermedius, separate from my frye intermedius, separate from my tarlton intermedius...ha :wink: 

Shawn


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## c'est ma (Sep 11, 2004)

Shawn,

Thanks for "telling it like it is." 

And Ed, thanks for the "how it should be" reminders...

Porkchop: what happens to the pattern in your mixed-line frogs?


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

This is a classic debate that inevitably comes down to the persons belief in line and the purity of them. I may be restating something someone else sadi but in different terms, but how do we know that Nabors imis are different from Sens imis for example?? Sure Alex brought in one group and started them breeding and Patrick brought in another, but where did they get them from? Is it possible they came form the same place? Absolutely. The only way to know that the lines are truely different or the same is to know who collected them and where, and I doubt anyone has that information. In my opinion, naming them Sens or Nabors simply puts a name to the lineage, but most likely somewhere in the middle of the line. If you really want to name the line it needs to come from locality or the person who COLLECTED them in th ewild to assure that you are reaching the origin of the line and not catching it somewhere in the middle. Lets just say this... Bob (for lack of a better name) is in the forest and collects 100 frogs from the same locality. He then ships 50 of those to someone in the US who tags their name to it (say Wilsons imitators) while the rest go to Europe and breed for 2 years before Williams imports them in and puts his name on the line. Now you have Wilson line imitators and Williams line imitators, but in reality they line from the same original stock, Bobs line. Not many people will recognize these as the same line becasue two different poeple brought them in, but in reality they are. What it comes down to is that we will never really know if there is a difference between Nabors, Sens, or any line of imitators unless ALL lines can be documented and traced back to different wild caught populations, and my guess is that documentation for all lines does not exist so it is a figent of our imagination that all of the lines are different. Now I'm not saying that they are not, but there is no way to know and to continue line breeding based on possible false information seems a bit closed minded. I don't know, maybe I just contradict others opinions here, but that's the way I see it. Now morphs (such as the tinc issue that Ed brought up) is a completely issue... those shuld be kept separate IMO.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "Yes Ed, but in reality we buy 6 frogs from one source, grow them up, breed the sibblings, sell them in groups, they breed the siblings...in the end all the frogs will have one eye in the middle of their heads "endsnip

So what you are saying is that the convience of buying groups from the same breeder is why we are directly inbreeding?? (your not the only one who can play the devil's advocate...) With the species that are common in the trade is it that hard to get the same strain/morph from two or more people who in theory got them from seperate breeders? 

snip "Everyone's too reluctant to interbreed...we assume that in the wild the frogs are following the same rules, or are unable to interbreed b/c of geographic isolation...but in most cases this is simply an assumption...not necessarily a truth (as it might be known for a tinc morph in contrary) "endsnip

There are a number of things that show that anurans do have kinship recognition so it is possible that there is some avoidence bias in wild animals but when we do not present the frogs with a choice we have eliminated this possibility from the frogs.
The problem is not that the frogs from different geographic regions cannot interbreed is that we shouldn't be interbreeding them until we understand the population dynamics in the wild (I almost said better but at all would be a start) as they could be very different and by interbreeding the lines we would be losing those exact characteristics that make that line unique. 

snip "It is possible (not saying probably)... but... one line (importation of said species A) is brought in and called line A and Line B is then brought in and guess what...both came from Europe where lines were mixed, -or- lines may have actually been the same...but we wish to keep them separate so as not to confuse matters...this effort may be futile though...the origin of the "lines" could have simply been a few months apart in importation, for instance. "endsnip

And because of this we should not be mixing the lines simply because we do not know. We should be looking to maximize genetic diversity within the line to ensure that few genes as possible are lost. Some of the lines are unique imports from the wild before the exporters started to segregate the animals into look alikes to maximize profits (anyone who thinks the collectors and exporters in Central and South America do not realize that differences in appearence can mean big dollars needs a reality check) and need to be maintained as such... Otherwise down the road we could in a similar situation to a number of other species that have no real value in other than they are pretty or cool because they are no longer "unique". (For example the reason AZA zoos do not try to conserve white tigers is because some idiot in the past crossed Amur (siberian) tigers into the Bengal tiger line rendering it useless as other than a logo or crowd pleaser). 

snip "they eventually may even look different, b/c sure my brothers kids dont look exactly like mine, nor would they 10 generations later if my kids inbred (line A) and his kids inbred (line B)... Endsnip 

Which is showing genetic drift within the line which is why people should outcross the lines to the same line maintained by other people as this will reincorporate the genes lost in those lines. 

Some comments back (if I seem a little incoherent, please accept my apologies as I am on my 5th day of sleep dep). 

Ed


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## biocmp (Mar 7, 2006)

Well, I have a question.... What about our 2 quinquevitattus lines. THey look the exact same etc... can these two different lines be bred together to allow some genetic diversity?

Is there a problem, other than they are just two different lines?

I only ask, because it doesn't look like we are going to get anything else out of Brazil, so perhaps allowing the two lines to cross paths wouldn't be so bad??


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## Homer (Feb 15, 2004)

Ed said:


> With most of the lines, the original founding stock consists of more than one pair, and what people need/needed to do is maintain the representation of the genetic diversity of the line as opposed to allowing the lines to die out and then trying to bolster them by outcrossing to different localities or lines.


I think this brings up an excellent point for dicussion here. If I understand him correctly, what Ed is defining as a line or bloodline is all individuals from a particular importation; as he is calling all original founding stock as the originators of a line. However, I would not use the same definition, and here is why:

If you consider all founding stock as the originators of one line, and all the individuals are wild caught individuals, you can get unrelated offspring from the originators. Consider 3 pairs of originating frogs, set up in different tanks. I would consider each a different line, because crossing their offspring results in breeding completely unrelated individuals.

If you consider all three pairs one bloodline, you don't know if you are simply breeding brothers and sisters together, or if you are breeding the unrelated frogs together, because there has been no attempt to differentiate whether the frogs from the line came from Parents A, B, or C. If such documentation has never occurred as a matter of course, that may be what we are stuck with as a practical matter, but I would not paint us in that corner as a matter of course.

Further, as I understand it, one importation tends to get split up between multiple hobbyists, and each hobbyist gets its own "line." The confusion sets in when the "lines" are from different importations which may be from different locations.




> When dealing with this form of line breeding, the way to resolve some of the gene loss is to get frogs from that line from a different person unless your frogs from that line have dominated the hobby and then we are screwed....


I'm not sure I agree totally. If you breed frogs from my definition of a "line" together, you are still breeding related frogs to one another. True, it might be cousins to cousins, which is better than brothers and sisters, but not as good as breeding unrelated lines from the same importation.

Naturally, if all the individuals from a single importation are related (say, because they are all offspring from a single pair from a single breeder in Europe), then my analysis is the same as yours, Ed.



> There isn't a difference between interbreeding lines of known importation than in breeding different natural color morphs (this does not include artificially maintained morphs like fine spotted azureus) as the genetic variation between those sites can be as significant.


I'm not sure I follow this statement. Could you clarify this a little, Ed? I don't want to misinterpret what is being said, and I think the inconsistency with how different people define a line makes it easy to misinterpret what is being said.



> I am not painting us into a corner, the hobby has been painting itself into that corner for years, I am simply the person turning on the light and pointing out that people are painting their way into the corner.....
> 
> Ed


I definitely agree with that.


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

Homer said:


> Further, as I understand it, one importation tends to get split up between multiple hobbyists, and each hobbyist gets its own "line." The confusion sets in when the "lines" are from different importations which may be from different location


I think this is along the same lines as what I was angling at. If all the frogs came form a particular importation and were split up between different people and given different line names, these are still the same frogs. They have different line names, but came from the same original collection group. Unless you can show documentation that a particular line was collected form a different population at a different time, how can you call it a different line?? Then, if you breed two different lines from the same collection group you are essentially keeping the true line pure since they came from the same location and collection. Maybe I'm nbot explaining it clearly, but it makes sense to me. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to give a line a name based on who brought them in, but rather nameing a line based upon all individuals that were brought in with that collection, whether Snes or Nabors brought them in. I thik it would fall much in line with these INIBICO imports we are bringing in now. Most are calling he frogs INIBICO March 06 or whenever they came in rather than Sean Stewart or Mark Pepper line of whatever. Does this make sense to anyone else??


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## Homer (Feb 15, 2004)

sbreland said:


> I think this is along the same lines as what I was angling at. If all the frogs came form a particular importation and were split up between different people and given different line names, these are still the same frogs. They have different line names, but came from the same original collection group. Unless you can show documentation that a particular line was collected form a different population at a different time, how can you call it a different line?? Then, if you breed two different lines from the same collection group you are essentially keeping the true line pure since they came from the same location and collection.


No, Stace, I think we have a language barrier here, which is what I was trying to note in my earlier message. The term "line" is being used inconsistently.

To my mind, line relates to "lineage," which means you can trace it back to two individuals. "Bloodline" further cements this definition, as people trace their bloodlines back through their ancestry.

This is how I see the term "line" used:
(1) Species (we've talked this one blue in the face)
(2) Morph (animals having similar morphological characteristics)
(3) Population (contiguous group of interbreeding animals from a location=local gene pool)
(4) Line (animals sharing a common ancestor/s--from same founders)
(5) Individual/specimen (a specific frog)

Okay, the importation is our founder population. As long as they are from the wild we have to assume that this is the most diverse group of individuals we will have from this population. The founder population is divided up and sold to several breeders. Each pair or breeding group represents a distinct line with a subset of genetic variety. The first generation of each pair or breeding group are the representatives of the line that will most likely be sold to the hobby.

Inibco 06 would represent the founder population. Stace, your offspring from one pair of that founder population would be one line of frogs from that founder population. You want to cross lines within that founder population to ensure genetic variation remains within the hobby, so a hobbyist buying your offspring wants to cross your line with the offspring of another hobbyist from the same population (or, if you have two pairs, you cross the offspring of one founder pair with the offspring of another founder pair).

This is where it gets tricky. What about the next Inibco shipment that comes in? If it's the same species, and morph, they can also become part of the total founder population, and more lines will come from those. However, most people won't cross those if some of the individuals don't look exactly like all the individuals that came in from the previous shipment--even though we know that there is a lot of variance shown between individuals from the same parents in these morphs.

The problem is that some locales/populations may represent a morph. Honestly, we'll probably never know whether two shipments represent the same contiguous breeding population. So, do we make the decision to limit the founder population to each shipment, and never the twain (and their offspring) shall meet?

With my example, and definitions, I think most would agree that it would be silly not to cross lines. However, when you say Alex Sens line imitator, most people only see two pieces of information: the species and the originating pair. If we don't know whether the Alex Sens line imitators and Todd Kelley line imitator arose from the same founding population, making that cross isn't so intuitive.

Thus, the reason for getting as much background info on the animals and their origins as possible.


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

inibico is BREEDING frogs for importation. i dont know how many pairs and i dont know if anyone else does. we are , however, receiveing brothers/sisters from inibico. w/out wild caught animals we no longer have the genetic diversity. we have offspring from a couple pairs out of the wild and we dont know if the animals we buy are related.
when we had WC coming in we could be more sure we had that diversity. now we just moved one of our breeders over there to breed frogs for us. 
the farm raised pumilio would be more "diverse" group to work from?
so if we dont get the wc stock we are stuck. we, as hobbiests, have to work w/ what is available to us. if the country of origin doesnt allow animals out they are doomed to whatever fate that country decides.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Hi Homer,

Snip "If you consider all founding stock as the originators of one line, and all the individuals are wild caught individuals, you can get unrelated offspring from the originators. Consider 3 pairs of originating frogs, set up in different tanks. I would consider each a different line, because crossing their offspring results in breeding completely unrelated individuals. "endsnip

In this case as there wasn't any designation as to which parents produced which offspring (which is pretty much still the case for all of the dart frogs because the tads and/or the metamorphs are not tracked to parental origin), all of the animals have to be treated as coming from the same line or as you put it the same parents, even though there may be multiple founders. I am not really referring to all of the same importation as this could cover multiple household (which at this time we do not know) but all of the animals from the same importation/morph from the same person (given the point I made above). This is how reproductive colonies of animals are tracked at Zoos. 

Snip "I'm not sure I agree totally. If you breed frogs from my definition of a "line" together, you are still breeding related frogs to one another. True, it might be cousins to cousins, which is better than brothers and sisters, but not as good as breeding unrelated lines from the same importation. "endsnip

No I am using the idea that as we have not tracked the parental stock of the offspring the animals have to all be maintained as I designated above. 

snip "Naturally, if all the individuals from a single importation are related (say, because they are all offspring from a single pair from a single breeder in Europe), then my analysis is the same as yours, Ed. "endsnip 

I don't think this changes this at all. 

snip "I'm not sure I follow this statement. Could you clarify this a little, Ed? I don't want to misinterpret what is being said, and I think the inconsistency with how different people define a line makes it easy to misinterpret what is being said"endsnip

I maybe being unclear due to massive sleep dep but what I see and hear on the various forums is the idea that all because something is the same species but are from different lines which are either from different importations or are from unknown importations that it is okay to breed them together. Even though something is the same species, this doesn't mean that there cannot be significant variations in the genes of the different localities that warrent it being maintained as that line or locality. These sorts of variations do not have to be visible to the naked eye but they could still be significant (for example off the top of my head, in several species of viperids which have very wide ranges, there are different antivenoms for the eastern and western ends of the range due to significant differences in thier venom make up (this occurs in some crotalids where the further south and west you go, the more neurotoxic components are found in the venom) enough that they should be maintained. 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "Unless you can show documentation that a particular line was collected form a different population at a different time, how can you call it a different line?? Then, if you breed two different lines from the same collection group you are essentially "endsnip

If they weren't tracked then how do you know that they are from the same population???? 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "This is where it gets tricky. What about the next Inibco shipment that comes in? If it's the same species, and morph, they can also become part of the total founder population, and more lines will come from those. However, most people won't cross those if some of the individuals don't look exactly like all the individuals that came in from the previous shipment--even though we know that there is a lot of variance shown between individuals from the same parents in these morphs. 

The problem is that some locales/populations may represent a morph. Honestly, we'll probably never know whether two shipments represent the same contiguous breeding population. So, do we make the decision to limit the founder population to each shipment, and never the twain (and their offspring) shall meet? "endsnip 

The benefit we should see with some of these projects like Inbico etc, is that thier founder stock (which is more than a couple of pairs) remains the same and thus these animals should be able to be included in the founders. This information should be able to pretty easily be aquired as they (are supposed to) have to track all of their animals from the egg onward. This way outcrosses and backcrosses are more readily available to maintain the genetic diversity of the frogs in question. 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "we have offspring from a couple pairs out of the wild and we dont know if the animals we buy are related. 
when we had WC coming in we could be more sure we had that diversity. "endsnip

No we didn't. All of the frogs in a couple of shipments could have been collected from a small pocket population of frogs because they were easily accessiable. This would have meant that they were all related and you just wouldn't know. 

snip "the farm raised pumilio would be more "diverse" group to work from? "endsnip

They are also potentially more likely to be an admixture of different localities that would normally breed true as they are to be of one locality that they are simply seperating out all of the different color variations to maximize profit. We will never know as there wasn't any oversight when the frogs were collected. 

snip "so if we dont get the wc stock we are stuck. we, as hobbiests, have to work w/ what is available to us. if the country of origin doesnt allow animals out they are doomed to whatever fate that country decides."endsnip

No we are stuck if we do not decide to manage the populations of the frogs available to us in a manner to promote long-term sustainability. Hoping that the country will reopen so we can get more wc animals to replace the stock we failed to maintain is unacceptable. 

Ed


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

Ed said:


> snip "Unless you can show documentation that a particular line was collected form a different population at a different time, how can you call it a different line?? Then, if you breed two different lines from the same collection group you are essentially "endsnip
> 
> If they weren't tracked then how do you know that they are from the same population????
> 
> Ed


That's the whole point! Unless we have something saying these all came form the same locality or form different localities, then it's justr assigning names to assign names. If we're going to take up the fight to keep lines pure, lets make sure we have pure lines to start with!


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## Homer (Feb 15, 2004)

frogfarm said:


> inibico is BREEDING frogs for importation. i dont know how many pairs and i dont know if anyone else does. we are , however, receiveing brothers/sisters from inibico.


Yes, I realized about half way through writing the example that the INIBCO example would not be the best embodiment of my explanation, but I did not want to muddy the waters further. However, we are not necessarily getting all brothers/sisters from INIBCO, as I understand that what they are doing is actually using large numbers of breeders in the natural habitats(many that are already there), but adding more deposition sites, thereby allowing for more offspring per acre than in the "unimproved" forest.

So, while some of the imports may be brothers and sisters to one another, many will not, and there is no way to tell which is which. Regardless, the greatest diversity of genes we will see is from the importation (notwithstanding any spontaneous mutations that might occur in captivity), so the paradigm I set forth for maximizing diversity remains unchanged.

It is really no different from the description I gave when the import is from Europe, and all frogs from the importation are descendants from one breeder in Europe. In that situation, defining the "lines" and acting in the same manner as if the founding stock was wild caught would still maximize the limited gene pool. Of course, finding frogs of the same morph that were not related to the European breeder's line would greatly increase the gene pool.


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

Maybe I am the only one who has taken classes in genetics here (I know thats not to be true, but sometimes you wonder), but awhile back Shawn (sportsdoc) made a comment that linebreeding, or in the human population we like to call it inbreeding, is not a good thing. Do you think that if you had children with your sister and that practice continued for several generations that massive problems would not arise?? Of course they would, so why do some people think it's different for frogs?? Now, I am all for morph distinction and keeping the morphs pure and if there is a difference between species (such as standard imis and intermedius), then they should be kept separate too to preserve the species. I may be alone in this one, but saying that inbreeding is good to keep the particular characteristics of a so called line intact, is kinda crazy. SAooner or later that kind of thinking will come back and bite us in the ass. Also, as far as naming a line for the person who brought in the frog and keeping it separate, why don't we have Breece line Cristobals or sos and so and so line Rios (having a brain fart and can't thik of any more names)?? Have we decided that it is no longer important to tag these incoming frogs by who brings them in??


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "That's the whole point! Unless we have something saying these all came form the same locality or form different localities, then it's justr assigning names to assign names. If we're going to take up the fight to keep lines pure, lets make sure we have pure lines to start with!"endsnip

If I understand you correctly, this is a history lesson that Zoos have learned the hard way a long time ago. If you do not know the history of an animal then you do not cross it into lines of animals that are known to be one thing even if you do not know its origin. 
For an example that is a little closer to home than white tigers and orang-outangs, Zoos are divesting from breeding the azureus that are in the pet trade because some of the work on them looks like they were outcrossed with some of the tincts by some of the peopke who were working with them early on. Zoos are to no longer breed azureus that are not from the more recent importation that was done to bring in known azureus.... 
For a different example, the preliminary work (so far unpublished on Corucia zebrata has it looking like there may be as many as 10 subspecies and possibly two species which have been interbreeding in the private sector due to mixing of animals of unknown origins and/or seperate imporations over the last 20 plus years. 

Some more comments,

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "Maybe I am the only one who has taken classes in genetics here (I know thats not to be true, but sometimes you wonder), but awhile back Shawn (sportsdoc) made a comment that linebreeding, or in the human population we like to call it inbreeding, is not a good thing. Do you think that if you had children with your sister and that practice continued for several generations that massive problems would not arise?? "endsnip

To some extent this is an apples and oranges comparision as different animals have differnet tolerances for inbreeding and inbreeding depression but in any case this is getting off topic. 

snip "Of course they would, so why do some people think it's different for frogs?? "endsnip

Because it may be. But again we are getting off topic. 

snip "but saying that inbreeding is good to keep the particular characteristics of a so called line intact, is kinda crazy. "endsnip 

There is a difference between this statement and the goal of maximizing genetic diversity within the line. Maximizing the genetic diversity with a limited founder stock will require inbreeding to some extent and if managed properly (which the hobby is only beginning to get to the point of being able to handle) can be minimized or eliminated (again as this is species dependent). 

Ed


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## c'est ma (Sep 11, 2004)

Personally I found Homer's post most sensible. I was going to suggest the term population myself to replace one of the senses in which the term "line" was being used, as opposed to the more intuitive sense of a line consisting of individuals from common ancestors. 

Ed, I'm probably confused, but it seems to me that you're saying that, say, if a certain number of individuals from a given importation go to two different breeders, then they each will be considered as having a "line" of that population, and from there on those two lines should not be crossed. That sounds entirely too arbitrary. 

(While I like Homer's "founder population" and "line" distinction, if people want to use the word "line" for both concepts, we could differentiate between "population lines" and "bloodlines.")


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

for inibico frogs, how many different areas are they using and how much do they move them to different areas? if they are in the same location time after time we will get the same related offspring time after time.

we have only population crossed farm raised and undocumented inibico frogs to work w/ and 1 or 2 "lines" of each frog so we`re screwed. 
any chance of the zoos releasing some lines or do we have to leave it all up to them, so as the illegal frogs should die out.

these are pets people, if you try to keep me to producing different lines and not breeding the "farm raised" and making unrelated breeding pairs available i`m out. it`s near impossible. i DO NOT have the resources, people and the ability to acquire founder stock anymore, to be able to accomplish what zoos can. we dont have access to the w/c animals, zoos arent releasing their lines and countries arent releasin a lot of morphs out there.
sorry, i quit smoking yesterday and your making me feel that my lifes work is useless. i have no ability to get anything but farm raised animals, inibico stock or single "lines" of frogs. your backing me into a corner and giving me no good advice on how to deal w/ this problem. 
what you are saying is that i should get rid of all my frogs(since they are farm raised or brother/sister pairing) and start over. 
so to me, all you are saying is that this is the way it should be done, although it`s impossible for a lowly breeder to do this, only zoos can do what i am suggesting.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "Ed, I'm probably confused, but it seems to me that you're saying that, say, if a certain number of individuals from a given importation go to two different breeders, then they each will be considered as having a "line" of that population, and from there on those two lines should not be crossed. That sounds entirely too arbitrary. "endsnipp

This is not what I am saying, although it may look that way if you consider that the frogs that arrive in a given importation tend to come from parts unknown but unless there is some compelling reason to not breed them (such as something that indicates that they come from different populations (such as blue verus green auratus (which may or may not be a suitable criteria with pumilio)). What I am saying is that because we cannot track the lines back to thier importation or origin (I suspect that Todd does have his information though) we do not know if they are from the same importation and thus cannot make the decision that they are the same population ("line") at this time. People often attempt to use the criteria that they "look" alike but when dealing with amphibians this is a major problem as it is way too easy to cause different lpopulation ocalities to be mixed due to the natural variations in the population particuarly given that some people have been already been interbreeding these "lines". 

I hope this clears up what I am saying. 


Ed


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

Honestly, not really, and I agree with Homer's post too. Fortunately or unfortunately there is no defined rule in this matter, just ones interpretation of it. I honestly am not trying to be rude, but Ed, your posts are very confusing as to which side you stand on. In one aspect it sounds one way then it changes and I honestly can't get a feel for what you are trying to say other than we should keep lines clean. Maybe i am just dumb, but a lot of it sounds, and forgive me again if this sounds rude, like politics. I see many of the points you are making, but I think you too easily dismiss the multitude of unknowns that exist when talking about this subject that make it so difficult. I mean, if we were to find out definitively that Sens imitators and Nabors imis came in tothe US in the same shipment at the same time and half went to Alex and half went to Patrick, would you say that these should not be allowed to cross eventhough they came from the same place at the same time?? If not, then why... I'm just not getting you stance on it. I say if that were the case, then all is good, but if they came form different times and places, then lets keep em separate. If we make that distinction of giving a line name to every person taht imports frogs these days, then we probably have about 50 lines of Cristobals and Rios, but nobody is attaching line names to them....


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip ". I mean, if we were to find out definitively that Sens imitators and Nabors imis came in tothe US in the same shipment at the same time and half went to Alex and half went to Patrick, would you say that these should not be allowed to cross eventhough they came from the same place at the same time??"endsnip 

No, if we could show that they are the same, then the lines can be mixed because we know they are the same. (Maybe some of the problem with my explinations is that I am sleep deprived also.) It is when we do not know that the lines are the same that we should not be mixing the animals. For example if I had a line of imitator that I was selling as the Ed Kowalski strain but I had gotten it from Todd Kelley and didn't out cross to Alex Sens stock or anyones else's stock then it is the same line and should be bred with Todd's stock (and should be called Todd Kelley line as that is the founder stock). 

snip but if they came form different times and places, then lets keep em separate. If we make that distinction of giving a line name to every person taht imports frogs these days, then we probably have about 50 lines of Cristobals and Rios, but nobody is attaching line names to them...."endsnip 

There is some difference between the the current imports today of the pumilio and the imports of the past so it is again a sort of apples and oranges sort of discussion. The old imports were not farm raised and occured sporadically over a period of years as opposed to the farm raised which have been arriving in relatively consistant numbers. (and the lines from Europe could be unrelated to anything in the USA as over there confiscated animals can be released to the hobby which meant that exports to the USA could be unrelated to not only most of the European animals but the USA animals depending on when the animals were exported.)
These lines tended to be frogs that were aquired in small numbers from different importations in seperate years. These often occured in when the typical method was to collect all animals a collector could get from a locality or localities and ship it into the pet trade at one time. As the area was collected out then the next batch would be collected elsewhere and shipped out (about 20 years ago, I was importing herps and spoke to the various exporters/importers so I had a feel for what was happening back then). And as there wasn't any other real distinction back then, the lines of related frogs were then called by the original breeder's names to show that these were different from each other's line. This is where the use of Frogtracks will help in the longrun as we will in the future be tracking the frogs over time so eventually we will know the relatedness of the frogs... 

Does that help or was I still rambling?? 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "i DO NOT have the resources, people and the ability to acquire founder stock anymore,"endsnip

In can't off the top of my head think of a species of dart frog that is commonly available (note I said available this doesn't mean established) in the USA that couldn't be managed if you started today. Most of these have sufficient founder stock and with some species the original breeders are still around (and in the hands of the original breeders). If we wait 20 years this will not be the case. I am already seeing hybrids sold at tables at at least one local reptile show. Marketed as a hybrid but a hybrid all the same. 

snip "to be able to accomplish what zoos can. we dont have access to the w/c animals, zoos arent releasing their lines and countries arent releasin a lot of morphs out there."endsnip

Why do we have to get more morphs? Isn't there enough already in the trade or are we going to all want to dump the current frogs to move to the next hot morphs. One of the reasons Zoos have policies against releasing animals is that the hobby has a terrible track record when dealing with Zoos and thier stock (canned hunts, game farms, theft, the list goes on) and we as a whole have done very little to make them willing to deal with us. (but again this getting off topic). 

snip sorry, i quit smoking yesterday"endsnip

You and your frogs will be the better for it. Congratulations. 

snip "i have no ability to get anything but farm raised animals, inibico stock(which i cant even get 4 of the same species out of)"endsnip 

So how is this a problem? 

snip "or single "lines" of frogs. your backing me into a corner and giving me no good advice on how to deal w/ this problem. "endsnip

I don't see this anywhere in the thread. 


snip "what you are saying is that i should get rid of all my frogs(since they are farm raised or brother/sister pairing) and start over. 
so to me, all you are saying is that this is the way it should be done, although it`s impossible for a lowly breeder to do this, only zoos can do what i am suggesting"endsnip 

Where did anyone say that? I think the references to the farmed animals indicated that it was different than the older imports and lines we were discussing. Now if you have been crossing all different lines of imitators then maybe you could take that interpretation from this thread... 

Ed


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

No, not rambling... it's good to hear this stuff. I agree with you in a lot of instances, but some I have to agree to disagree. What would be nice, and would clear up all of this 20 separate bloodlines of anything, would be genetic testing. Of course it would be expensive, but much the same as scientist can trace two apparently unrelated people back several generations to find a common ancestor, it would be nice to do the same for these lines of frogs. Theoretically it would work, but if the importation batch was large enough and there was a tremendous amount of genetic diverstiy in the original group, then it might no be so successful.


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

sorry for the breakdown, ive had a cigarette and i fell a bit better now(mentally at least). this just proves ive been a little too secluded lately and need to see people and not so many frogs. 
sorry for the last post.
let me try to calmly explain.
ah, forget it, let me try to explain my way:
most people cant afford shipping one group of frogs let alone 2 to try and get genetic diversity. now w/ different lines and different importations we cant even mix look alikes for fear they dont interbreed in the wild. we`re damned if we do damned if we dont. you cant expect a "hobby" w/out all that money from the government so it was huge!!(sorry little crossover to a tragically hip song"killer whale tank") to be able to "do it like the zoos".
basically you have just stated that the hobby is not viable. we both have our place in this and never the 2 shall meet unless they give over some of their budget or workers or lines to straighten this out.
we just do not have the resources or data on the animals we have, some only come from 1 breeder in europe and if it was up to a zoo they would never be bred and die out.
you will not get fired for what you are saying but i will loose a lot of business from what you are saying. a lot of newbies will just see this as an insurmountable task just to have a couple frogs.
these are pets, not viable animals to be released back into the wild. i`m sorry for stating this but we are not zoos people. we are trying to save animals which are going to die out in the wild and we dont have enough time to trash everything and start over. and zoos dont have the ability to work w/ everything out there.
i`ll apologize ahead of time for this post. 
sorry i just cant hold my tongue anymore. it`s hard enough to get these guys breeding and take care of them let alone all these other standards that seem to be about to get impressed on us breeders.
at least try to put up some kind of game plan instead of shooting down the "hobby" at every turn.


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

i read somewhere that farmed frogs are probably crosses of different populations and therefore not viable.
20 lines of what? i dont even see more than 2 people posting the same animals at one time. anyone have any panguana lamasi not from phil originally? and green legs not from phil? any reginas not from the 2 recorded imports. any cb pumilio of anything not from farmed populations other than rich`s research lines? anyone w/ cobalts not from matt mirabello? terribilis bicolor or aurataenia not from europe? oyapok truncatus or nikitas not from chuck powell? if so please pm me so i can acquire unrelated stock. oh it has to be from the same importation, sorry.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "No, not rambling... it's good to hear this stuff. I agree with you in a lot of instances, but some I have to agree to disagree. What would be nice, and would clear up all of this 20 separate bloodlines of anything, would be genetic testing. Of course it would be expensive, but much the same as scientist can trace two apparently unrelated people back several generations to find a common ancestor, it would be nice to do the same for these lines of frogs. Theoretically it would work, but if the importation batch was large enough and there was a tremendous amount of genetic diverstiy in the original group, then it might no be so successful."endsnip

And you are correct DNA testing could be the way to deal with this issue (as well as the farm raised frog one). 

The thing is that I have been around the animal keeping thing a long time now (although there are those that have been around longer) and the breeding of animals of unknown origins is a risky item (I have cited a few examples but there are more...) because when it backfires the results are potentially catestrophic and wide ranging as it can devalue all of the animals that are of unknown origin as well as those that are known to be crosses. I do not think that in at least a few frog populations (whole population not just line) could take that sort of hit and remain viable... 
To me, crossing the known lines (does this make you feel a little better Aaron) at this time is in some ways playing with dynamite. I cringe whenever I see a post on the forum asking to identify a frog to a morph as this is another point of worry... 

Ed


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

no, none of this makes me feel any better, i think i just have to find another line of work and leave this as a hobby.
like i said i have enough stresses feeding, caring for and having the diversity to stay in business. this thread makes me feel that the only thing ive gained is knowledge and a lot of happy faces on kids out there.
check the classifieds as i`m going on hiatus for a while. i need to rethink what i`m doing and why i`m doing it. maybe i`d be a little better off volunteering at the atlanta bot gardens while my girlfriend does a post doc in a year.


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

dont feel bad ed, this has been coming for some time now. get some sleep!


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "most people cant afford shipping one group of frogs let alone 2 to try and get genetic diversity. "endnsnip

Okay, I find this one hard to buy into... IF a person can spend all of that money on plants and terrarium supplies to make that pretty tank they can shell out another 35-50 buck for a second overnight shipping. Hell, they can keep the frogs in quarantine another few months and save up and then introduce all of the frogs at the same time..... 

snip "now w/ different lines and different importations we cant even mix look alikes for fear they dont interbreed in the wild. we`re damned if we do damned if we dont. you cant expect a "hobby" w/out all that money from the government so it was huge!!(sorry little crossover to a tragically hip song"killer whale tank") to be able to "do it like the zoos"."endsnip

Why not? With the advent of an online data base, there isn't anything preventing this as this is how the Zoos now do it. It doesn't take tons of money anymore just some space on someone's server. The Zoos do not do it with tons of money. Most Zoos are currently just getting buy (look at the layoff at Detroit, Baltimore Zoo etc). 


snip "basically you have just stated that the hobby is not viable. we both have our place in this and never the 2 shall meet unless they give over some of their budget or workers or lines to straighten this out. "endsnip

I didn't say it wasn't viable. What I said was keeping the frogs as they currently are is not viable the way the hobby operates. In 20 years we will have the frog equivalent of the domestic platy, betta or guppy if we do not start doing something about it.A lot of the characteristics that make the different animals unique will be lost. In the worst case scenario it could be the difference between as significant as a domestic meat turkey and a wild turkey.... 

snip "t do not have the resources or data on the animals we have, some only come from 1 breeder in europe and if it was up to a zoo they would never be bred and die out. "endsnip

The resources are beginning to be there. The statement about the Zoo is a bunch of crap, Zoos have managed populations back from few founders more than one. For example al the captive Przewalski horses of today are descended from only 13 of these ancestors.... 

snip "ll not get fired for what you are saying but i will loose a lot of business from what you are saying. a lot of newbies will just see this as an insurmountable task just to have a couple frogs."endsnip

I doubt it. 

snip "are pets, not viable animals to be released back into the wild."endsnip

So we shouldn't be trying to maintain the unique features that make each of the species, morph, or line special? We should be looking to end up with the frog equivalent of the mutt or alley cat? 

snip " stating this but we are not zoos people. we are trying to save animals which are going to die out in the wild and we dont have enough time to trash everything and start over. and zoos dont have the ability to work w/ everything out there."endsnip

So what if you are not Zoo people. You don't have to be a Zoo person to be willing to do your part to maintain a cool species. The American Killifish Organization has been keeping morphs of killies alive for decades that are now extinct in the wild. I fail to see why this hobby can't make do the same thing. 
So you realize that if we cannot maintain them as anything other than a generic dart frog, they will have died out not only in the wild but in captivity? 


snip "ard enough to get these guys breeding and take care of them let alone all these other standards that seem to be about to get impressed on us breeders. "endsnip

As the hobby evolves a higher standard should also evolve with it and in times of crisis, events and criteria can move quickly. 


snip "st try to put up some kind of game plan instead of shooting down the "hobby" at every turn."endsnip

I think there have been several comments along this line... 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snip "no, none of this makes me feel any better, i think i just have to find another line of work and leave this as a hobby. 
like i said i have enough stresses feeding, caring for and having the diversity to stay in business. this thread makes me feel that the only thing ive gained is knowledge and a lot of happy faces on kids out there. 
check the classifieds as i`m going on hiatus for a while. i need to rethink what i`m doing and why i`m doing it. maybe i`d be a little better off volunteering at the atlanta bot gardens while my girlfriend does a post doc in a year"endsnip

Aaron, I think you are getting the established named lines confused with the imported farm raised animals. There really are not a of named lines out there when you consider the total number of different types of frogs in the hobby. Look at the tincts for example, the name of the morphs has prevented any need to naming it for a line. 
With the exception of some deliberate selection for a color morph, fine spotted azureus, "koi' galactanotas, etc (which are another issue....), these are different than the named lines. 
Relax on the hiatus, when I was younger, there were a couple of times I burned out and significantly downsized my collection, only when to get more when I fell off the wagon (And to this day I regret giving away/selling some of the animals involved....). 

I will get some sleep as soon as my provider finishes arguing with the insurance company.... 


Ed


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

if YOU were the ONLY person who had to take care of 1000+ frogs daily, meaning making sure you dont run out of food, making sure the mortgage is paid so you dont get kicked out (because no rental property would ever let me do this), dealing w/ advertising, sales, shipping, shows calls for info etc. etc. you would understand. getting animals from 2 different people, 1 of which grew his frogs up under sterile conditions and one of which who used wild moss and having the sterile frog die when put in w/ the other you would realize what i`m talking about. i cant afford to dedicate the time and space for this to happen. a business has nothing to fall back on. if i get into a car accident no one knows even which tanks have frogs in it, let alone anyone who would know how to take care of a collection this large. i am at the straw point now(about breakin the camels back). i`ll tell you it would be nice if we werent at war and the ecomony wasnt falling but we are and peoples last priority right now is the correct breeding of frog lines. i know i deal w/ it everyday. i am however getting" do you have 2 lines of this animal, if not i am not interested". and i also get i need 1 of these and 4 of these and 3 of these and etc. it`s a falling economy and w/ hobbiests offering the same frogs as me for 1/2 the price i cant compete. people are so much into a discount they will buy froglets at $25ea when they can get subadults for $50ea. believe me i have been dealing with the hobby end thru the recession. most people only want a cheap pet, unfortunately. i would love to see it go that way but unfortunately i dont. people want terribilis right now and aurataenia and i have had the same 3 truncatus to subadult size w/out 1 sale. there just isnt the amount of people out there breeding frogs that are needed to do this. as i said there arent enough people having the amount of success needed to accomplish this task. and the established breeders out there deal w/ each other but i dont have a "friendly" relationship w/ ****, ****** and forget the breeders on the west coast, they dont talk to us out here on the east. there are clicks in this hobby and some breeders will purposefully not sell to me so how do you acquire different blood if your not in the "clique" or how do you even know that someone who "says" they have 2 bloodlines even does. great way to make a couple bucks though, saying you have 3 or 4 bloodlines when no one can "prove" you wrong.
i have made a few friends here off db but believe me there are a lot of people who would like to see me go fishing more often and produce less frogs. believe me it`s not as easy as you would like to believe.

Edited by: kyle1745


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

just to get back on topic, has anyone showed that there are inbreeding problems w/ line breeding for a # of generations?


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

I hope that no one takes any of my comments as personal attacks. These are just my opinions. The reason we can get into the discussions we do here is because most vendors and hobbiests care so much about the health and well being of these frogs.


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## Ben_C (Jun 25, 2004)

> just to get back on topic, has anyone showed that there are inbreeding problems w/ line breeding for a # of generations?


Define 'problems.'


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## Dendrobait (May 29, 2005)

In crossing bloodlines...what do you call the offspring? If everyone is always looking to cross different bloodlines, eventually the bloodline distinctions will dissapear. I mentioned this before, and Homer did an excellent job with some like this also in this thread. I think we may place a little too much emphasis on different bloodlines. If the founder stock contained more than a pair their would be some diversity to start with. If 2 or more bloodlines were maintained side by side and of equal popularity in the hobby it would not be hard every few generations to do an outcross and bring in an individual from the other bloodline. No need to always do that. Its unfortunate it is too difficult(well, at least I doubt anyone would bother) to keep traack of frog pedigrees which would allow you to choose individuals within a bloodline that are the most distantly related. 

All the above assume the bloodlines originate from the same population...if this is in question I think you'd be better off calling the line a morph.


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## biocmp (Mar 7, 2006)

Ah, dendrobait, you said what I was thinking. Doing an outcross, only to bring it back within the line. Like the 2 "distinct" quinquevitattus lines. Would it really be so bad to take a group of kelley quinqs and cross it with a group of Phil's quinqs. Then you could split up the offspring back into their respective groupings, kelley or P.Tan. This gives some genetic diversity. Plus we are not worried about losing the distinct variation in a species because they look the exact same, or so I've gathered from all of the posts.

Ed, what say you? others? I'm interested in this, because the quinqs are my favorite, and I fear genetic bottlenecking is in store, probably later than sooner but still on the horizon.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

In all honesty, I probably need to come back to this topic after soem sleep. 

but I will try here 
snip "In crossing bloodlines...what do you call the offspring? If everyone is always looking to cross different bloodlines, eventually the bloodline distinctions will dissapear. I mentioned this before, and Homer did an excellent job with some like this also in this thread. I think we may place a little too much emphasis on different bloodlines. If the founder stock contained more than a pair their would be some diversity to start with." 

See some of my comments above. In most cases, the lines are the result of different importations. If they are from the same imporation, then they should be the same line unless there is some compelling reason to seperate them (like blue versus green auratus). 

snip "If 2 or more bloodlines were maintained side by side and of equal popularity in the hobby it would not be hard every few generations to do an outcross and bring in an individual from the other bloodline."endsnip

If they are of the same bloodline then they are of the same line just a different branch (I think collateral is the term I want here) and this is okay, if they are of different bloodlines then outcrossing wipes out both bloodlines which is what I am concerned about until we know the degree of relatedness. 

snip "No need to always do that. Its unfortunate it is too difficult(well, at least I doubt anyone would bother) to keep traack of frog pedigrees which would allow you to choose individuals within a bloodline that are the most distantly related. "endsnip

Frogtracks.net 
We are getting to the point where we can track the animals by simple input... 

snip "All the above assume the bloodlines originate from the same population...if this is in question I think you'd be better off calling the line a morph"endsnip

The problem with this is that morphs has its own distinct meaning in the hobby and if it doesn't visually look different then people will automatically assume it is of the same morph. 

snip "Doing an outcross, only to bring it back within the line. Like the 2 "distinct" quinquevitattus lines. Would it really be so bad to take a group of kelley quinqs and cross it with a group of Phil's quinqs."endsnip

If they are of the same origin then there isn't any problem with this form of outcrossing but (see below for more comments). 

snip "Then you could split up the offspring back into their respective groupings, kelley or P.Tan."endsnip

Based on what criteria? 

snip "This gives some genetic diversity. Plus we are not worried about losing the distinct variation in a species because they look the exact same, or so I've gathered from all of the posts. "endsnip

We should not only be worried about the distinct variation contained within the species as a whole but within the morph or line. Let me try a different attempt to explain it using D. auratus. People frown upon crossing blue and green auratus (or any of the color variation of tincts) because they can visually see a difference. For some reason, there is an issue with continuing this idea with frogs that may be visually the same but genetically as distinct as the blue and green auratus. Why is it okay for one and not okay for the other? The frogs in question are those that have been designated as lines named after a specific person. 

snip "Ed, what say you? others? I'm interested in this, because the quinqs are my favorite, and I fear genetic bottlenecking is in store, probably later than sooner but still on the horizon."endsnip 

See above. There are large differences in species tolerances to inbreeding. Inbreeding issues (such as reproductive depression) can appear in as soon as a few generations or in some species never (like the ultimate in inbreeding, parthnogenic geckos, blind thread snakes and Ambystomids). At this time we are ill prepared to make an assessment (or even a guess) as we do not have any tracking of the reproductive rates of the frogs in controlled conditions to give us the required baseline data. 

I strongly suspect that with a little effort to manage the genetic diversity within the line and some dedicated hobbyists to maintain the genetic diversity by keeping their frogs for the long haul then we should be fine. 

Ed


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Ok i've been reading this and have been a bit busy lately to respond... so here are some of my thoughts after reading most of this thread.

1. The key to this whole conversation is responsibility, and this also maybe the key to the longevity of these animals in the hobby or existence. Its not to say you can not or should not breed frogs without specific information on where they came from and if they are related or not. The truth is that with the older frogs much of this information is scarce at best. So there is no correcting the past at this point. Though we can be more responsible with the future frogs, and with the use of tools like frog tracks, know what we are doing. The key is knowing what you have and honestly expressing it to your buyers. The more frogs and lines that make it into frog tracks the better.

2. The question I see missing is this: say 2 people buy groups of a specific frog from the same person. Each of those groups breed, and then those offsping are purchased by person 3, and bred. Are the offspring of group 3 more or less related than those from group 2? I do know that people have had better breeding success with group 3 over 2.

3. In my time in the hobby I have seen the "F1,2,3,4,5" designation almost drop off the map and I think that is something we all need to get back to. As well as gathering as much information as possible about the parents as frogs are passed from one person to the next.

4. Aaron... I think its time for a vacation.... Don't leave us or the hobby you clearly love. Automate, scale back, etc etc... but don't let work or anything ruin your true passion. Life is just too short. I struggle with very similar things in my job, and honestly I've learned to let most things slide off my back anymore and I can honestly say I am night and day more content than I was fighting what could not be changed. Just some thoughts from a burnt out geek.


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## froggerboy (Jul 9, 2006)

With all this debate I'm still not seeing a clear solution.How do we correct the mess that we have?


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