# Sky blue azureus?



## aurantiaca1 (Dec 13, 2010)

Anyone working with these animals? The only breeder i've seen with this type of azureus is Sean Stewart. Please share some pics and info if you have any! As far as I can tell these are line bred azureus that produce just straight blue, no black markings. Thanks!


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

from my understanding, Sean Stewart only has 1 azurues that has no black on it, that being a male, he does have a line of sky blue, but other breeders sell the same as reduced spots or fine spots. you can get a pair of sky blue and still produce froglets with lots of black spots and vise versa.


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## jbherpin (Oct 16, 2009)

aurantiaca1 said:


> Anyone working with these animals? The only breeder i've seen with this type of azureus is Sean Stewart. Please share some pics and info if you have any! As far as I can tell these are line bred azureus that produce just straight blue, no black markings. Thanks!


Why would you want to support a line breeding project? The integrity of a species' genetics is being corrupted, and with a lack of knowledge, someone new to the hobby could mix these generics with a natural bloodline and then propogate these examples as "azureus for sale", and the cycle broadens... I don't know if this is a locale specific thing, in that case simple clarification is required with an exclaimer asking that this form be kept seperate from traditional/standard, fine spot, etc. azureus.

JBear


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## bsr8129 (Sep 23, 2010)

I've seems adds for sale of sky blue Azures and wondered why no one said anything as I thought line breeding was a no-no in the hobby. I have a male Azures that has very fine spots but so far all of his off spring have been normal.


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## a Vertigo Guy (Aug 17, 2006)

I have a hunch that what most people think are "bad" frogs genetically are merely unhealthy frogs. 

Sean Stewart has a colleague who did a study at University of FL on continuous line/inbreeding and hypothesized it would require about sixty consecutive generations of said breeding before genetic and physical abnormalities presented themselves in the resulting progeny. Just passing on what I was told. I do not claim this info to be scientifically factual.


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## whitethumb (Feb 5, 2011)

theres also the wattley morph which most of them are all blue with no black markings


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Point of information. Sky blue azureus are also part of the normal genetic variation in the wild population. So there are the line bred sky blue frogs which produce mainly sky blue frogs and there are the non-line bred frogs that can come from darker animals and/or produce darker animals on thier own.... 

As for inbreeding showing genetic changes, the estimate for 60 generations is probably extremely generous and assumes a number of things that are not being practiced in the hobby such as attempting to preserve the genetic diversity of the population...... Studies on other animals can show significant changes within a couple of generations even when coming from genetically diverse populations.... 

Some coments,

Ed


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## TerraFerma (Feb 20, 2011)

Ed said:


> Point of information. Sky blue azureus are also part of the normal genetic variation in the wild population. So there are the line bred sky blue frogs which produce mainly sky blue frogs and there are the non-line bred frogs that can come from darker animals and/or produce darker animals on thier own....
> 
> As for inbreeding showing genetic changes, the estimate for 60 generations is probably extremely generous and assumes a number of things that are not being practiced in the hobby such as attempting to preserve the genetic diversity of the population...... Studies on other animals can show significant changes within a couple of generations even when coming from genetically diverse populations....
> 
> ...


Hi Ed - On a related question how does this jive with folks forming pairs out male and female siblings, and then selling their offspring to someone who will do the same? This seems to happen not infrequently in this hobby as a lot of folks pick up multiple frogs (with hopes of forming a pair or group) from someone who has multiple frogs for sale from the same pair


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## BlueRidge (Jun 12, 2010)

TerraFerma said:


> Hi Ed - On a related question how does this jive with folks forming pairs out male and female siblings, and then selling their offspring to someone who will do the same? This seems to happen not infrequently in this hobby as a lot of folks pick up multiple frogs (with hopes of forming a pair or group) from someone who has multiple frogs for sale from the same pair


I think this is very common, not everyone can get unrelated pairs. Hell, how unrelated are any of the frogs in the hobby now anyway? I mean, most come from a handful of lines (Stewart, UE, Linbo, etc). Is there any info out there on how these lines are related?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

TerraFerma said:


> Hi Ed - On a related question how does this jive with folks forming pairs out male and female siblings, and then selling their offspring to someone who will do the same? This seems to happen not infrequently in this hobby as a lot of folks pick up multiple frogs (with hopes of forming a pair or group) from someone who has multiple frogs for sale from the same pair


It is an excellant method for eliminating the genetic variety in the population... It's been discussed more than a few times.... Some people are starting to practice getting frogs from different breeders to try and maximize the genetic diversity but many people still go with getting multiple animals at one time from the same seller. Other than those who are working to track degrees of relatedness (ASN for example), most people still seem to think that simply breeding like to like is enough to stabilize a population.... 

Some comments. 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

JaredJ said:


> I think this is very common, not everyone can get unrelated pairs. Hell, how unrelated are any of the frogs in the hobby now anyway? I mean, most come from a handful of lines (Stewart, UE, Linbo, etc). Is there any info out there on how these lines are related?


There is some information put together for various animals, that data is typically contained in the ASN mangement guide for those animals. In general, the reference to a line, means that is typically the person who stabilized some breeders of certain import. In some cases, the lines should be bred together and in other cases they should not. It has to be reviewed on a case by case basis. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## zBrinks (Jul 16, 2006)

Here's a neat azureus I have at home. It's an F2 animal (Wattley line) that, to the best of my knowledge, has not been line bred, but is just showing a part of the natural phenotypic variability inherent to Dendrobates tinctorius 'azureus'. Their first offspring are just now coming out of the water, and appear to have little/no black (although the other frogs in the group have a bit more black on them). The top pic is of the frog in question - the latter pics are of other azureus in my collection, so you can see how variable these animals are!


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## BlueRidge (Jun 12, 2010)

Ed said:


> There is some information put together for various animals, that data is typically contained in the ASN mangement guide for those animals. In general, the reference to a line, means that is typically the person who stabilized some breeders of certain import. In some cases, the lines should be bred together and in other cases they should not. It has to be reviewed on a case by case basis.
> 
> Some comments
> 
> Ed


How can someone out if lines are related or how does someone know that lines aren't ultimately from the same parents? Is a new line essentially a new group of imported frogs? Is say a new shipment from UE a new line if they were from WC frogs?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

JaredJ said:


> How can someone out if lines are related or how does someone know that lines aren't ultimately from the same parents? Is a new line essentially a new group of imported frogs? Is say a new shipment from UE a new line if they were from WC frogs?


Normally a new line is an import from an unknown source population that has been established by a person in the USA. I haven't reviewed thier site recently but most of the frogs I looked at on Understory's site come from known locations so they are all the same line. As a more recent example, the pumilio that have been coming out of Panama have at best guess work as to which populations they actually did originate from, so the "cauchero" imported in 2009 should not be bred to "caucheros" imported in 2011. Instead of establishing them to a line, they are being discussed by year... 
In other respects you'll see people refer to some frogs that have come in very limited numbers, such as azureus, to different people but in reality, azureus originated from two different sources, NAIB (National Aquarium in Baltimore) and Wattley but you will on occasion find people referring to the breeder as if they were another "line" so you have to also be careful to make sure a reference is to an actual line..... 

So there are some uses in the hobby that don't follow traditional usages so care has to be taken with assigning frogs to a "line". Most of the lines are frogs that have been well established for quite awhile such as Linbo, Kelley, Sens... and a few others. 

enough rambling for now... 

Ed


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