# "Albino" dart frogs



## darkpilatus (May 25, 2006)

Im pretty new to the dart frog end of the hobby and recently I have started seeing amelanistic darts in this forum and a few others...I am a little wary. Although I haven't worked with darts very long I have been keeping and breeding herps for just over 17 years, personally and professionally. In that time I have seen the emergence of some of the most beautiful and varied animals through selective breeding. Amelanistic, Hypomelanistic, Anerythristic, Motley and so on. While they are beautiful specimens and have a place in the world just like all living beings (except for us maybe lol) I'm not sure this is very good for dart frog enthusiast or the hobby itself. It is only a matter of time before we start seeing other morphs...
Now I will reiterate the point I am trying and probably failing to make. Our hobby (dart frogs) in my opinion is caring, breeding and enjoying darts in natural like environment, exhibiting as natural behaviors as possible. Its obvious to anyone reading this forum the care that goes into there husbandry is priority one by all of the dedicated members here. Thats part of the charm of this hobby... partly what led me to it.
Color "morphs" and dart frogs don't go together. Breeding for locality or even a slight pattern difference (e.g. "small spot" D. azureus or "banded' D. leucomelas) is fine you will see variation like that hold its own in the wild but I feel that trying to keep the lines as pure as possible is very important. There is a reason why we see virtually no "morphs" in the wild... they don't survive. One of those evolutionary oversights.
Traditionally the breeding of morphs in herp culture has been to make money and flood the hobby as quickly as possible so you can make a buck before everyone is breeding them what you have... I have seen it a lot. 
Anyway this is my opinion and seeing how there are 2705 members on this board alone I'm sure there are 2704 different views than mine... and I think that is great so let this be a discussion. No bashing others lets see what everyone thinks. Thanks everyone.


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

Welcome aboard. If you do a search on hybrids or selective breeding, I think you'll be pleased to see that you are preaching to the choir here as most of the hobby agrees with you. You should check out the Amphibian Steward Network http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20490 to check out a group that is working hard to keep the genes of pdf pure and wild.


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## darkpilatus (May 25, 2006)

Brent,
I've actually seen a lot of the work the network has done and it is great... Im a zoo keeper and this is what we do for a living... its nice to see enthusiasts doing the same. Thanks for the post.


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

darkpilatus said:


> Brent,
> I've actually seen a lot of the work the network has done and it is great... Im a zoo keeper and this is what we do for a living... its nice to see enthusiasts doing the same. Thanks for the post.


That's the idea. To make the hobbyists part of the solution.


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## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

Just as one of my persistent thoughts--it would also be difficult to deliberately "design" anything better than the originals, however much an individual hobbyist would like to show off "something different." What could be more beautiful, colorful, exciting and different from what's already there? 

I don't know of a single reputable dart breeder who is a "buck maker."


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## Dcairelli (Feb 13, 2017)

Hey everyone. This is a old post but I would love to hear more opinions on this topic as I might buy a few albino tadpoles soon. I come from reptiles where it's more accepted for morphs to be bread and spread around. I understand the argument of genetic purity. I'm failing to see how breeding for morphs could hurt the dart frog hobby. I want to hear opinions from ppl. I want to understand better and be able to make my own informed personal decision. I personally think it would be awesome to breed for other types of albino frogs. Especially terribilis.

What are the negative aspects of this and are there any positives?



Thanks

Dylan


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## 55105 (Jan 27, 2015)

Dylan don't do it man!  see the thread on Dart Frog Warehouse. 

I once had an idea pop into my head that breeding the least shy frogs I could choose would possibly reduce shyness and that would be a great!... I hate shy frogs, but that is also a form of selective breeding and it is frowned upon by the vast majority of the community.

The reason being is that any form of selective breeding can lead to many unintended and unwanted consequences. Perhaps the frogs you choose to breed based off *your* opinion aren't really that genetically fit. Well, any undesirable traits will be inherited too. Once those enter the hobby there's no going back. They'll be bred and so on... It's a one way street.

It's best to leave it up to randomness. It's not even close to natural selection but it is the best we can do in captivity. I've had several offspring that I wanted to keep just because of unique patterns but even that would be selective breeding, so as hard as it is to not keep them I knew it would be best to let them go.

Hopefully Ed can take a moment to explain it better than I ever could but for the future of the hobby it is best to breed as randomly as possible. Stay away from anything that has been selectively bred in anyway - including albinos. It's not a path you want to take in this hobby.



Dcairelli said:


> Hey everyone. This is a old post but I would love to hear more opinions on this topic as I might buy a few albino tadpoles soon. I come from reptiles where it's more accepted for morphs to be bread and spread around. I understand the argument of genetic purity. I'm failing to see how breeding for morphs could hurt the dart frog hobby. I want to hear opinions from ppl. I want to understand better and be able to make my own informed personal decision. I personally think it would be awesome to breed for other types of albino frogs. Especially terribilis.
> 
> What are the negative aspects of this and are there any positives?
> 
> ...


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

In short, anytime you work to selectively fix a trait you reduce the genetic diversity of the entire group of animals as you can't avoid reducing genetic variation in other aspects of the animal. As an example, reducing histocompatibility complex gene variation is linked to reduced ability to survive exposure to diseases and parasites. So if you have frogs that throw albino offspring, that is fine, just don't selectively pair them with siblings or the parents if at all possible as that reduces the overall genetic diversity of the population. The dendrobatid frog population is different than many of the reptile animal populations as the different frogs tend to be from different discrete locations that are unlikely to be collected from again in the future (and most collecting information is not recorded and frogs are often assigned "locations" based on appearance in more recent imports (say post 2000) maybe from different populations. As a result this means that you cannot outcross them as readily as you can some of the more popular color variation species in the hobby like ball pythons, corn snakes, kingsnakes or leopard geckos to restore some of the genetic variation. 

See the references in this thread http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/general-discussion/286705-hybrids-pure-locales-inbreeding.html

(and search the following string Dendroboard Inbreeding on google to get a larger picture)

some comments 

Ed


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