# The Importance Of Mixing



## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Let me start off by saying that I'm familiar with the case against mixing. My perspective on the topic is quite different. 

Did you know that horses used to exist in North America before the first humans arrived? Shortly after humans arrived the horses went extinct. Probably not a coincidence. 

Fortunately for humanity and horses, they did not go extinct in Europe/Asia. Perhaps they were close to going extinct as a direct result of people hunting them for food, but then somehow somebody realized that horses could also be used for transportation. The result? _Mixing_. A whole lot of mixing. 

Horses helped humans overcome the obstacle of distance. People were able to travel everywhere a whole lot faster, so they were quickly exposed to many new things... both good and bad. But evidently the good far outweighed the bad. 

The same is true of birds. Thanks to flight, they are really able to overcome the obstacle of distance, which means that they expose themselves and the rest of nature to a much greater variety of new things. Do birds and the rest of nature benefit from all this mixing? Definitely. 

This forum helps us to overcome the obstacle of distance. We expose each other to new things. Do we benefit from this? Definitely.

You don't want to mix your frogs? That's certainly your choice, but don't think you're doing them, or us, any favors by isolating them. 

If you truly want to be helpful to frogs, humans and the rest of nature then hybridize the heck out of your frogs. Mixing up their traits will make them, as a group, far more resilient and adaptable. The opposite effect would be achieved by inbreeding. 

In terms of plant hybridizing, it seems like the standard among breeders is ruthless culling, given that hybridizers want to have a reputation of only supplying the highest quality plants. While this might seem to help the hybridizers, it certainly doesn't help anybody else. People who grow plants should appreciate that the same exact plant might struggle in one location but thrive in another. And since everybody's conditions are different, a plant that struggles with you might thrive with me, and vice versa. The same is certainly true of frogs. 

If you genuinely care about frogs, or orchids, or Nepenthes, or isopods, or any other living things, then you should want them to proliferate as much as possible, which would make culling them anathema to you. 

Well there you go, my perspective on mixing.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

> It's a Trap!


https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/plants/156402-eden-exercise.html


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

I'm usualy not a big fan of Joshs frogs, but they wrote a good statement on this topic. So copy paste it is..

''Once a hybrid is produced, there is no going back and making the animals 100% wild type again – the phenotypic and genotypic integrity of the animal is lost. With many dart frog populations at RISK in the wild, the last thing we should do as responsible hobbyists is reduce the captive gene pool.. ''

There more explaination why not to cross species on the webpage, but the quote above is the most important.
https://www.joshsfrogs.com/catalog/blog/2014/02/can-mix-poison-dart-frogs/



So let's not make frogs go extinct by cross breeding them please..
If crossbreeding was beneficial, it would have been done long aggo to help save certain species..


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## carola1155 (Sep 10, 2007)

I'm not sure if this is just an attempt to stir the pot, or what... but I don't think I've seen such an incoherent argument for mixing on this forum in years.

The biggest problem with your argument is that it seems to assume that outbreeding depression isn't a thing. Not all hybrids exhibit heterosis- and it is incredibly naive to assume that they would.

Also, the hobby does a very poor job of selecting for real fitness anyway. Providing the animals with a cushy controlled terrarium environment is really not the best scenario to be experimenting with hybridization. 

We should all be mindful of inbreeding, but that boils down to doing a better job of managing the bloodlines and making smarter choices when setting up pairs/breeding groups... it does not mean we should be haphazardly creating hybrids.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Let's all just completely disregard everything mankind knows about genetics and science, what do you say? If we all just pretend that outbreeding depression isn't real, then it just goes away, right? If we simply refuse to acknowledge reality, science, and everything that has been proven beyond all shadow of a doubt, then it simply isn't real.
It's just like Santa and the Easter bunny, guys. When we quit believing, it just not real anymore.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

I would like to point out that certain people in the thread have been stirring the pot, and starting threads on mixing species, since early 2014. 

https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/plants/156402-eden-exercise.html

In fact, it would appear that a large majority of his posts since 2014 have been about mixing. Actually, in double checking, I see how wrong I am. Only one post that the op has made since early 2014 has NOT been about mixing. Every other post made since early 2014 has been about mixing. When searching his posts before that time, there is nothing frog related at all.

If I connect the dots, I might get my hand slapped again for pointing out what some might find obvious. I didn't connect any dots, or point out what I find obvious. I just put forth facts concerning the OPs history on DB.

I'm leaving now. I hate swimming in nasty, polluted water.


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## Broseph (Dec 5, 2011)

Pumilo said:


> I would like to point out that certain people in the thread have been stirring the pot, and starting threads on mixing species, since early 2014.
> 
> https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/plants/156402-eden-exercise.html
> 
> ...


Before you go, are you thinking there might be a... Connection here? About Dart Frogs?


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## hp192 (Feb 28, 2016)

I don't mix frogs and understand the reasoning. It IS interesting though that a couple major metropolitan zoos that I've been to actually do mix dart frog species in their displays.


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## Schledog (Apr 28, 2020)

This is my first time posting but using the argument mixing will save the species from extinction is completely bad. Yes, horses were in North America before people but they weren’t the kind we could domesticate and they shouldn’t be compared to the tarpan and other early horses. Once you cross breed the animal it becomes useless in the sense of conservation. You used horses as an example which I find funny because the downfall of the Tarpan, the true wild horse was because of cross breeding. The reason it went extinct is because of crossing. Also although crossing plants like Nepenthes is cool it makes it a pain if you only want pure plants for conservation purposes. It sucks if you buy an expensive pure plant only for it to turn out to be a cross of two. TLDR your reasoning for crossing conservation wise with examples of horses and Nepenthes is bad.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

hp192 said:


> It IS interesting though that a couple major metropolitan zoos that I've been to actually do mix dart frog species in their displays.


No, it is simply designing displays that people will pay money to see. Has nothing to do with animal care, and everything to do with making enough money to keep the doors open.

Let's all not feed the troll, shall we? Last time he was here he got shut down and didn't come back for six years; that's about the best we can hope for at this point.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

hp192 said:


> I don't mix frogs and understand the reasoning. It IS interesting though that a couple major metropolitan zoos that I've been to actually do mix dart frog species in their displays.



Its a Theme Thing. 

I wish they wouldnt do stuff like that either, but its even been done exhibiting Prosimians. 

Zoos are Exhibit First. Zookeepers and curators gripe frequently about admin decisions that dictate their charges.


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

One Trick Ponies have never impressed me. 



Pumilo said:


> I would like to point out that certain people in the thread have been stirring the pot, and starting threads on mixing species, since early 2014...


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Scott said:


> One Trick Ponies have never impressed me.


Doesn't it depend on the trick?


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## dmb5245 (Feb 7, 2014)

hp192 said:


> I don't mix frogs and understand the reasoning. It IS interesting though that a couple major metropolitan zoos that I've been to actually do mix dart frog species in their displays.


Out or morbid curiosity, what were these mixed displays like? Way bigger than your typical viv? My local zoo, Pittsburgh, had some leucs on display for awhile, but it was pretty bad and didn't last long.


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

Possibly, probably not, and certainly not in this case.



Encyclia said:


> Doesn't it depend on the trick?


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

dmb5245 said:


> Out or morbid curiosity, what were these mixed displays like? Way bigger than your typical viv? My local zoo, Pittsburgh, had some leucs on display for awhile, but it was pretty bad and didn't last long.


Same goes for Zoo Antwerp, 

horrible enclosures! For example multiple tinctorius females is a space too small for them.. They have no idea what they are doing with those animals.. Every 6 months different frogs house those enclosures aswell.. Such a shame.. 

A lot of people look up to zoo's like that and also ask them for information. Try convincing such people zoo's have it wrong..


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

All being said, I do enjoy radical mythic Halfies..Centaurs..Goat Men with reed pipes..Griffins.. Flying Monkeys.. Humanzees (#1!) 

Planet of the Apes triology was the best fun. 

Koba sympathizer here. 

Sometimes yanking the topic completely away from a troll is another way though not as effective as starving it completely its funner. 

The OPs post is pruriently trolltoon but sometimes the troll lable can be misused. Not here though. Things are good here.


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## dmb5245 (Feb 7, 2014)

Tijl said:


> Same goes for Zoo Antwerp,
> 
> horrible enclosures! For example multiple tinctorius females is a space too small for them.. They have no idea what they are doing with those animals.. Every 6 months different frogs house those enclosures aswell.. Such a shame..
> 
> A lot of people look up to zoo's like that and also ask them for information. Try convincing such people zoo's have it wrong..


The leuc display in Pittsburgh was big enough, but it was so bare they had nowhere to feel safe. What was most aggravating is that it was in the primate house where they have pothos growing EVERYWHERE. Can't we spare some cuttings for the frogs?

It is a shame, because it doesn't take much effort for a zoo to get it right.


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

I'm just going to pipe in, as a zoo herp and invert keeper, zoos' missions are not yours as a hobbyist. We're here to educate on nature and ecology and threats to species, not to teach you how to take care of exotic pets. Point of fact, we actively discourage people from doing so. Don't look to zoos for husbandry advice, because that's not what we're here for. Also, not all zoos are equal in their husbandry expertise or guidelines. Some non-accredited zoos are utter crap and should be shut down. However, if you're AZA accredited then you are held to some pretty rigorous standards and most of the care and husbandry that happens goes on behind the scenes where the public will never see it. In mixed displays we have 8-10 hours a day to check on stuff and observe it, every day, with round the clock access to quality vet care. No private hobbyist has the time resources or vet resources that we do, which lets us get by with doing mixed species exhibits that the normal hobbyist can't, or at the very least, shouldn't, do.


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## Organics (Jan 17, 2020)

LOL diversity is what gives species robustness 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Sometimes the stronger husbandry happens in the Off Display. Especially with herps. 

Its a mixed bag, and as dimensional as any other genre. 

Wherever money is the first priority the compromise always comes at their expense. Its almost like money and animals arent meant to mix on some ethereal level.

The only way its different is when people are personally ok with less. And that is like an insane thing to say out loud in our society.


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## Ravage (Feb 5, 2016)

Are far as I'm concerned, we just now know someone to never buy from, nor sell to. 
They used to have mixing issues at the Denver Zoo and Denver Botanic Gardens. They have a new crew of amphibian keepers now, and that won't ever happen again. Ignorance is just the lack of information (unless it's intentional and used as a weapon), amphibians didn't used to be big draws or important displays, so maybe a different type of expert was tasked with them. Not every institution had an Ed.


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## CarsonH (May 14, 2007)

Ill play along...

I agree that many hybrid species of PLANTS are much more robust, grow faster, can handle more stress. There are also commercial operations which create ONLY hybrids because they produce better - you cannot rebreed them, as they are sterile, or create a huge mish mash of random junk.

Cross breeding comes into question with the HUMAN race. How much trouble would someone get into if they said 'someone from this continent CANNOT mate with someone from another continent' and then the reason be.. well, because we need the genetics to be pure, and clean... WTF?! that would never fly, even in the early 1900's

Just a few thoughts to keep it rolling... haha


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

The value of being More Robust!! Bigger!! Blended Coolness!! 

Those have become crass values.

If niche forms are lost to homogenization, they are gone forever. We think we know more than we really do know. Thats exciting but also sad-scary. 

There is more detail to every animal than we realize, or care about. 

What biome and selection have - and are - intricately composing is far more interesting than our abilities - no matter how technically spectacular.

I am going to dare say that some things are sacred.


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

Pumilo said:


> I would like to point out that certain people in the thread have been stirring the pot, and starting threads on mixing species, since early 2014.
> 
> https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/plants/156402-eden-exercise.html
> 
> ...


I saw the title of the thread, and the name attached to it, and I thought for certain that someone had dug up one of Epiphyte's inflammatory posts from years ago, but nope, I find a recently deceased equine about to be flayed open. To anyone considering jumping in to the conversation in the hopes of instilling some common sense in the OP, (if past threads are any indication) his mind is made up, and no amount of evidence, logic or reason will change that.


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## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

@ Scott & Dane - sorry that I haven't really read the terms, but...what about just deleting this thread? People can't seem to just *avoid feeding the trolls*. So cancel 'em.

An earnest question, nothing more.

cheers


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

While we'd love to, not the way we do things here.

Might close it though.

s


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

jgragg said:


> @ Scott & Dane - sorry that I haven't really read the terms, but...what about just deleting this thread? People can't seem to just *avoid feeding the trolls*. So cancel 'em.
> 
> An earnest question, nothing more.
> 
> cheers





> If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty


We just have different perspectives on the topic. Maybe my perspective is wrong? It is entirely possible. Then again it is entirely possible that your perspective is wrong. 

Fact is that you don't truly "win" in any real sense of the word by shutting down reasonable discussion and disagreement about an important topic. 

And I'm not a troll. A troll is someone who posts something solely for a reaction. I am 100% sincere in my belief and wish to civilly and seriously discuss the topic. Calling me a troll is just plain rude. 

Attack my argument, not me. None of you have managed to refute, or even address the fact that...

1. horses greatly facilitated mixing
2. we are incredibly better off as a result


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## Ravage (Feb 5, 2016)

CarsonH said:


> Cross breeding comes into question with the HUMAN race. How much trouble would someone get into if they said 'someone from this continent CANNOT mate with someone from another continent' and then the reason be.. well, because we need the genetics to be pure, and clean... WTF?! that would never fly, even in the early 1900's


The human race is not only the same species, we're all the same sub species **** sapiens sapiens. There is no cross breeding involved. There's not a worry about eliminating an island population, because we've already pretty much finished interbreeding with all of them. The types of tinctorius are all island populations (more or less) and once they are gone we won't be bringing them back. This is an aesthetic choice, but as most folks involved in the hobby agree, preserving the wonders that evolution has presented us with is a virtue. You can disagree, and I'll never buy, sell or trade with you (the proverbial "you"). I might tell others so they won't do it as well. We're going to a lot of effort to maintain bloodlines, and swap them around with others who know their bloodlines to preserve these morphs and maintain their vigor.


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

epiphyte said:


> Attack my argument, not me. None of you have managed to refute, or even address the fact that...
> 
> 1. horses greatly facilitated mixing
> 2. we are incredibly better off as a result


This argument doesn't need to be attacked, since it has no bearing here. We aren't discussing animals bred for transportation or utility. We are discussing captive display animals, many of which are endangered or threatened in their native habitats, animals that retain the best chance of long-term survival when their genetic integrity is maintained. With better husbandry practices and improved captive breeding, we are reducing pressures on wild populations by creating greater domestic availability. 

And there I go again, getting sucked in to a one-way discussion with a brick wall. Well done.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Ravage said:


> The human race is not only the same species, we're all the same sub species **** sapiens sapiens. There is no cross breeding involved. There's not a worry about eliminating an island population, because we've already pretty much finished interbreeding with all of them. The types of tinctorius are all island populations (more or less) and once they are gone we won't be bringing them back. This is an aesthetic choice, but as most folks involved in the hobby agree, preserving the wonders that evolution has presented us with is a virtue. You can disagree, and I'll never buy, sell or trade with you (the proverbial "you"). I might tell others so they won't do it as well. We're going to a lot of effort to maintain bloodlines, and swap them around with others who know their bloodlines to preserve these morphs and maintain their vigor.


To be clear, last I heard humans are hybrids, given that our ancestors were crossed with **** neanderthalensis. 

Regarding frogs, you're trying to maintain bloodlines for a world that no longer exists. No man steps in the same river twice. The world is constantly changing, which means that so is every single niche out there. 

Animals and plants adapt to their dynamic niches by constantly creating new combinations of traits. Nature selects the most relevant combinations. It is a numbers game. 

A single orchid seed pod might contain a million seeds. And a specimen plant can produce 100s of seed pods. This incredibly huge hedge of trait combinations allows orchids to rapidly adapt to rapidly changing environments.

If you want frogs to rapidly adapt to rapidly changing environments, then their genetic pool should be as wide and deep as possible, which is something that can only be achieved with hybridization.

Frog hybrids aren't going to fit the same exact niches of captive species, which is an incredibly beneficial thing, given that those exact niches no longer exist.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Dane said:


> This argument doesn't need to be attacked, since it has no bearing here.


The argument against mixing, or at least one of them, is that it is detrimental to expose frogs to new things, given that some of those new things might be bad. 

But human history clearly shows that being exposed to new things is very beneficial, given that the new good things greatly outweigh the new bad things.


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

Dane said:


> And there I go again, getting sucked in to a one-way discussion with a brick wall. Well done.


Yep, you just did..


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## gonzalez (Mar 28, 2018)

What are you even trying to gain by cross breeding them though? All dart frogs seem to do just fine in captivity, so why crossbreed them? I’d much rather be able to see these George’s animals as they were in the wild.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

epiphyte said:


> To be clear, last I heard humans are hybrids, given that our ancestors were crossed with **** neanderthalensis.


_Depends where you're from. If you are a native african, you have a chance of being 100% H. sapiens sapiens DNA-wise. I you're from most of the rest of the world, you're going to have some small amount of H. neanderthalensis DNA in you. If you are specifically from Melanasia or an aboriginal you have some relic H. neanderthalensis and H. denisova DNA in you.

This does not make us hybrids in the strict sense of the word. Not all of our ancestors crossed with the other **** species. A few did, and some DNA started to circulate in the human population.

There is a large discussion in the scientific world regarding the definition of a species and where hybrids fit in that, but that would lead too far astray for this topic_



epiphyte said:


> Regarding frogs, you're trying to maintain bloodlines for a world that no longer exists. No man steps in the same river twice. The world is constantly changing, which means that so is every single niche out there.
> 
> Animals and plants adapt to their dynamic niches by constantly creating new combinations of traits. Nature selects the most relevant combinations. It is a numbers game.
> 
> A single orchid seed pod might contain a million seeds. And a specimen plant can produce 100s of seed pods. This incredibly huge hedge of trait combinations allows orchids to rapidly adapt to rapidly changing environments.


_All these things you describe are phenotypic plasticity or normal recombination within a species (important: WITHIN a species). Orchids are probably one of the worst examples to give for this, as they are actually highly specialized and tend to die out rapidly if their environment changes. The real reason an orchid produces millions of seeds is because the have an obligate symbiosis with certain mycorrhizal species. The seeds have no starch reserve or anything. They depend 100% on coming into contact with the right fungus to germinate and grow. Hence producing millions of seeds just improves the chances that during your lifetime enough seeds come into contact with the required fungus to grow and reproduce._



epiphyte said:


> If you want frogs to rapidly adapt to rapidly changing environments, then their genetic pool should be as wide and deep as possible, which is something that can only be achieved with hybridization.


_First of all, we actually want to prevent these rapid changes from happening. This would render most of your above comments moot, but for the sake of argument: No, you don't want to hybridize everything, because then you actually lose diversity in the long run. If you want your genetic pool to be deep enough for a species to survive, you want to have the largest population possible of that species. That way the chances of having the apropriate genes for a new environment are the highest, whilst preserving the actual species._



epiphyte said:


> Frog hybrids aren't going to fit the same exact niches of captive species, which is an incredibly beneficial thing, given that those exact niches no longer exist.


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

epiphyte said:


> But human history clearly shows that being exposed to new things is very beneficial, given that the new good things greatly outweigh the new bad things.


You're really saying this. Now. In the middle of a lockdown crisis due to a new virus...


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

> _First of all, we actually want to prevent these rapid changes from happening. This would render most of your above comments moot, but for the sake of argument: No, you don't want to hybridize everything, because then you actually lose diversity in the long run. If you want your genetic pool to be deep enough for a species to survive, you want to have the largest population possible of that species. That way the chances of having the apropriate genes for a new environment are the highest, whilst preserving the actual species._


Imagine all the terrariums in the world. How many is that? It's a lot, so there is going to be a huge range of conditions... ranging from cloud forest conditions to desert conditions. 

Imagine if 100 random terrariums are selected from all the terrariums in the world. How many of these terrariums would have conditions that are suitable for dart frogs. 1%? 

With your approach maybe we could get the number up to 2 or 3%. But with my approach maybe we could get the number up to 20 or 25%. 

Where is the long run loss of genetic diversity? Genetic diversity is a function of habitat diversity. Hybridize frogs for different habitats and the result will be more and more genetic diversity. 

In the orchid world maybe 80% of the hybridization is purely superficial... prettier flowers. But of course nearly everybody wants showier orchids, but the result is that these hybrids end up in a really wide range of conditions, for which they are continually selected for. The winners are proliferated of course... divisions are shared/sold. 

Just like there is a demand for showier orchids, there is also a demand for showier frogs. So frog hybridization is inevitable. But since frog hybridization is also beneficial, it should be encouraged. The result will be a lot more frogs in a lot more conditions, which means a much larger gene pool.


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## CarsonH (May 14, 2007)

Johanovich said:


> You're really saying this. Now. In the middle of a lockdown crisis due to a new virus...


I don't disagree with the lockdown and quarantine, I am actually a little further in the belief that even MORE stuff should be closed to limit the amount of people who get in touch with it.

However... If everyone got infected (and really, lets hope this doesn't happen, since I too have people I care about that may not make it through an infection) would the resulting survivors be better off? Solely on a reoccuring Coronavirus standpoint... Like, if the survivors got in touch with a NEW Covid like virus, would they have some underlying resistance? Even if marginal?


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

Quote : 'Since frog hybridization is also beneficial, it should be encouraged. The result will be a lot more frogs in a lot more conditions, which means a much larger gene pool.'


You realy have not got a clue what you are talking about do you.. You still compare to flowers, horses, humans,... and think your 1+1=2..
While you havent read or researched a single comment since your mind is made up already..

So it's like Dane said, talking to a wall..


I just want to thank all the people who posted their comments on this topic or discussions like this. These comments make people who are new to this topic or hobby able to use their common sense and open mind to look at it all from a neutral perspective and filter all the other bs told.. 

That's why I think sometimes it's important too discus with walls @Dane


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## DPfarr (Nov 24, 2017)

You know what a good argument against interspecific hybridizing is? I don’t keep frogs for anthropomorphic reasons. 

Frogs are not a horse. It’s not an equivalent to say, “we mixed horses and look how well that benefited man.“ 

I hope that no one dedicated to dendrobatid husbandry looks at it and thinks how they will derive a benefit to humanity in the way we perceive livestock.

This hobby and growing orchids are a luxury. If it’s not and you’re in an ecology or conservation role do not grandstand and pretend your ideas are being done with traditional biology principles.


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## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

> Fact is that you don't truly "win" in any real sense of the word by shutting down reasonable discussion and disagreement about an important topic.


Who but you is interested in "winning"? Nobody here wants to talk with you about this idea. Your matter is preposterous, and your manner is odious. 



> Maybe my perspective is wrong? It is entirely possible. Then again it is entirely possible that your perspective is wrong.


A perspective is just another view, from another angle, of the same thing. Perspectives are subjective - they cannot be wrong. More to the point of the quote though - nobody, or nearly nobody, here shares your perspective. 

This topic is only important here, in the sense that the cultural norms of this community agree on *THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT MIXING*. The perspective of this community is that the act of mixing is wrong. Therefore making arguments (after a fashion...) in favor of the act is wrong.

The internet is a big place. Your people are out there. Please go find them. Or accept and abide by the norms of this community, and stay. *Do no mixing, and make no more arguments for mixing.*

Good luck with your condition. It looks tough, and I regret your suffering. Goodbye.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

jgragg said:


> Or accept and abide by the norms of this community, and stay.


Hopefully we agree that community norms can be wrong. Where we clearly disagree is regarding the benefit of being able to question/challenge community norms. 

In your mind, if a community norm is wrong, then how can it be corrected? What is the process? 

You say that if I disagree with the norm then I should just leave. But if people aren't allowed to say that they disagree with the norm, then how do you know that is why they are leaving? 

A community goes from 1000 people to 100 people. The 900 people who left disagreed with the norm and now the community is a shadow of its former self. But it still doesn't change its norm... and then there are only 50 people left... and then only 1 person is left. 

Adaptation is just as important for communities as it is for organisms. Adaptation is a function of diversity, so diversity is just as important for communities as it is for organisms. 

If this community doesn't permit anybody to question its norms, then the community's diversity will be diminished, and it will struggle to adapt.


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## macg (Apr 19, 2018)

epiphyte said:


> Just like there is a demand for showier orchids, there is also a demand for showier frogs. So frog hybridization is inevitable.


I disagree that it is inevitable that the community will accept and succomb to the the demand for showier frogs. Some will, but I believe most will not.

It's become clear from centuries of mammalian husbandry and the past few decades of herp husbandry that breeding animals for their appearance is one of the most irresponsible actions we can take as caretakers and stewards of life. 

Dogs with severe hip displacement issues and allergies, sand bowas that are allergic to sand (for the love of...allergic to sand!), etc The list goes on and on.

If this hobby ever starts breeding frogs for showier frogs I will find a new hobby. I'd prefer to not watch the suffering.


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## Schledog (Apr 28, 2020)

The reason I got into the hobby as well as the plant hobby is because I care for conservation. I converted my lawn to a native prairie and raise monarch butterflies every year for conservation. That being said if the hobby became all hybrids like you said (which won’t happen) then I wouldn’t want to be in the hobby. I don’t need hybrids because nature provides good enough frogs on its own. That’s my final bit because op isn’t listening to our replies and we should just ignore this thread to shun op.


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## Guest (Apr 29, 2020)

I really only see two elements of your position.

1. Hybridization directly benefiting man in some way, which DPfarr covered eloquently.

2. Hybridization having a direct benefit to frogs, by being able to survive a wider range of vivarium conditions(or perhaps even in the wild). 

I am not even going to try to answer the "vivarium conditions" as I think that falls under the umbrella of "benefit to man". 

However, as to somehow producing a hardier frog in the wild.. 
Most, if not all, of endangered dart frog species are at risk because of the lack of forethought and consideration of humans. It is just pure folly to think that we can some how fix the issue with even less forethought and consideration, hybridizing species from disparate environments and hoping for the best. Even if someone could get on board with hybridizing to save wild populations.. it damn sure isn't something that some hobbyist should be attempting. It's non-sequitur - we broke something we don't fully understand, and now we are going to fix something we don't understand, by doing things we don't understand.

 have you been eating the mushrooms growing in your vivarium?


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

People like E, dont seem to realize that there are those who are interested in More than the appearance of a frog, lizard, snake. The "Paint Job". We are interested in its behavior, its origins, its unique tendencies and morphology.

We arent interested in playing with it. Photoshopping hats on it, calling our friends over to yell and act stupid when we feed it. 

I would prefer all anuran forms to be plain green to an anthropogenically created "Showier Frog" I swear I would.

The thing is we are fascinated by them the way they are, in all their ways.
We will keep our ship tight against the sensationalism of those desensitized to the sublime.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Schledog said:


> The reason I got into the hobby as well as the plant hobby is because I care for conservation. I converted my lawn to a native prairie and raise monarch butterflies every year for conservation. That being said if the hobby became all hybrids like you said (which won’t happen) then I wouldn’t want to be in the hobby. I don’t need hybrids because nature provides good enough frogs on its own. That’s my final bit because op isn’t listening to our replies and we should just ignore this thread to shun op.


I'm listening, I've read every reply, and I'm trying to address people's concerns. 

I agree that the frog hobby won't become all hybrids. But there will certainly be plenty of hybrids, because people always want more options. Frogs are not an exception to this rule. 



> One would think that man could find enough variation in the orchid family, as it occurs in nature, to more than satiate his taste for variety. Yet man's appetite for variety is never appeased. He has produced over two times as many hybrids, in the past 100 years that he has been engaged in orchid breeding, as nature has created species in her eons of evolutionary effort. - Calaway H. Dodson, Robert J. Gillespie, The Botany of Orchids


more hybrids -> more variety -> more adaptability


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## kblack3 (Mar 9, 2015)

If I want a Doberman I buy a Doberman. If I want a R. Fantastica Varadero I buy one. It has been shown time and time again that people want to know what they are buying and pure blood lines matter not only for the various reasons stated above but also because people desire knowing what they are getting. Most people care that what they are buying are the true representation of the species and/or morph they wanted. Most people do not want a watered down version. Your statements are fantastically flawed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

houtenziel said:


> However, as to somehow producing a hardier frog in the wild..
> Most, if not all, of endangered dart frog species are at risk because of the lack of forethought and consideration of humans. It is just pure folly to think that we can some how fix the issue with even less forethought and consideration, hybridizing species from disparate environments and hoping for the best. Even if someone could get on board with hybridizing to save wild populations.. it damn sure isn't something that some hobbyist should be attempting. It's non-sequitur - we broke something we don't fully understand, and now we are going to fix something we don't understand, by doing things we don't understand.


Southern California used to have one species of freshwater shrimp... Syncaris pasadenae, but then the Rose Bowl was built on its habitat. 

Yeah... don't build stupid stadiums on the habitats of critically endangered species. No argument from me, but shit happens. If it wasn't the Rose Bowl it might have been an asteroid. Or maybe some migratory duck introducing some pathogen. 

It was a basic problem of too many eggs in one basket. This problem would have been reduced if Syncaris pasadenae had been crossed with Syncaris pacifica, assuming that such a cross would have produced fertile hybrids. 

A relevant example is that of the Florida panther...



> To increase genetic diversity of the Florida panther, eight Texas pumas were introduced to the Florida population to hopefully promote the survival of the native population. The results indicated that the survival rates of hybrid kittens were three times higher than those of purebred pumas. Due to the successes of this restoration effort, the genetic depletion of the Florida panther population is now not as much of a problem as it used to be, but ought to be monitored since the population is still in a fragile state.


Why stop at crossing Florida panthers with Texas pumas? Why not cross all of the US's big cats with all the other big cats that would result in fertile offspring? If we did so, then there would be much greater genetic diversity which would allow big cats to populate the widest possible range of habitats in the US. 

It is myopic to simply try and preserve the currently existing species. It really shouldn't take much foresight to see the incredible benefit of facilitating speciation.

The optimal hedge will maximize speciation.

None of us are in a position to hybridize big cats, and it's too late to hybridize Syncaris, but it's not too late for dart frogs.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

kblack3 said:


> If I want a Doberman I buy a Doberman. If I want a R. Fantastica Varadero I buy one. It has been shown time and time again that people want to know what they are buying and pure blood lines matter not only for the various reasons stated above but also because people desire knowing what they are getting. Most people care that what they are buying are the true representation of the species and/or morph they wanted. Most people do not want a watered down version. Your statements are fantastically flawed.


I never said that people want watered down versions of anything. Hopefully genetic testing will become very affordable sooner rather than later. And then you'll know exactly what you're getting. 

In this video though about hybrid cichlids...






...I vaguely remember the guy saying something about some people not caring whether they were buying a hybrid or a species.


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## Organics (Jan 17, 2020)

But wouldn’t reducing genetic diversity by hybridization be putting too many eggs in one basket 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

epiphyte said:


> I never said that people want watered down versions of anything. Hopefully genetic testing will become very affordable sooner rather than later. And then you'll know exactly what you're getting.


Why in the world should it EVER be upon the buyer to do genetic testing to see if he is being taken for a fool or not? You're not actually serious, are you? This is like Trump telling us to inject ourselves with Lysol, yes? Please say yes.
Is it just me, or is this one of the most....


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Organics said:


> But wouldn’t reducing genetic diversity by hybridization be putting too many eggs in one basket












These are three rupicolous Laelias in my garden. The first two are hybrids (primary crosses of rupicolous Laelia species) while the third is a species. I've also tried a few other species of rupicolous Laelias but the two hybrids have done much better in my unique set of conditions. The species haven't ever bloomed for me. 

Using this specific example, I'm not sure how genetic diversity would get reduced. Let's say that I sell off or give away the species. If it weren't for the hybrids, then I wouldn't have any rupicolous Laelias. 

Hybridization has allowed rupicolous Laelias to be in more baskets. And the same would be true of dart frogs.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Pumilo said:


> Why in the world should it EVER be upon the buyer to do genetic testing to see if he is being taken for a fool or not? You're not actually serious, are you? This is like Trump telling us to inject ourselves with Lysol, yes? Please say yes.
> Is it just me, or is this one of the most....


Sorry, I should have specified that sellers would also be able to use the device. Who wouldn't want to use the device?


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Okay, listen, you are in the wrong place. And you know it but you keep posting because you are enjoying being an irritant.

That shows some weird compulsivity or some other disordered behavior.

It has been made clear that we dont buy it, dont want it, find your proposals ill founded but most of all, are not the ones who want amorphic frogs that look like clown snot presumptuously "adapted" to mediocre care.

We actually like developing skills and putting in the extra work to host challenging species. We like that. 

I hope this thread closes soon.


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## DPfarr (Nov 24, 2017)

I’m not sure if anyone else has read Carlos’s take on introducing epiphytes everywhere. Same stance. 

Carlos, you do not understand genetics. If you take cat Aa Ab Ac and Ad to breed without selection you know what you’re going to end up with? A greater homogeneity of one phenotype and likely loss of alleles. 

I’ve been breeding orchids commercially for 13 years. We consider you being able to actually grow something in addition to the flowers. Many of the hybrids I want to do simply are economically feasible. Too many people would struggle with them despite the attractive display. Other times, myself and many others have created worse looking flowers than the species that comprise them (primary to complex). 

If you really want to do the most good for a Dendrobatid on a genetics basis, don’t. There are so many different phenotypes of these species, their genotypes are already diverse enough.


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

Looks like I missed a lot of posts during the night 





epiphyte said:


> Imagine all the terrariums in the world. How many is that? It's a lot, so there is going to be a huge range of conditions... ranging from cloud forest conditions to desert conditions.
> 
> Imagine if 100 random terrariums are selected from all the terrariums in the world. How many of these terrariums would have conditions that are suitable for dart frogs. 1%?
> 
> ...


Now imagine all ecosystems around the world. That’s an even bigger range in conditions, and guess what? They all have their own frog species (except for Antarctica). I thought the disappearing niches was referring to the wild, but from this post that doesn’t even appear to be the case. In which case I don’t even see how they are disappearing anymore. You build the vivarium for the frog you want, not the other way around. That’s the thing, I don’t see why you would want to hybridize frogs to adapt them to specific other environments when you can just build a perfect environment for much less effort. How many of the terraria built for dart frogs are suitable for dart frogs? 100%

With your way of thinking and your hybridising approach you could still never get up to 20% or 25% for dart frogs. How many dart frogs live in desert environments? Zero. How many in cold environments? Zero. If you want to keep dart frogs you’re bound to tropical ecosystems anyway, so what is your point again for hybridizing them?



epiphyte said:


> Southern California used to have one species of freshwater shrimp... Syncaris pasadenae, but then the Rose Bowl was built on its habitat.
> 
> Yeah... don't build stupid stadiums on the habitats of critically endangered species. No argument from me, but shit happens. If it wasn't the Rose Bowl it might have been an asteroid. Or maybe some migratory duck introducing some pathogen.
> 
> ...


How does hybridizing diminish diversity? Well if you cross all big cats with each other you end up with one hybrid. So going from several species to one hybrid, that sounds like dimished diversity to me species-wise. Same with your shrimp example, the two Syncaris species are crossed and one disappears, that leaves one species and one hybrid. The two species were genetically distinct, but the hybrid is not as it carries only half of the distinct genes from each species. This means half of the genetic diversity is actually lost forever.

Florida panthers and Texas pumas are in fact the same species, but are different subspecies. In a way comparable to the different D. tinctorius morphs (not that I encourage mixing morphs, just pointing out that they are not actual hybrids). This is also a specific case where mankind caused problems for the cat. If their habitat was not fragmented as much by us, there would not have been any problems with genetic diversity. It is the isolation of fragmented populations that caused inbreeding and problems. Crossing them with Texas pumas was a last-ditch gamble to preserve this populations and it could just as well have turned out for the worse, take as an example the Ibex in the Tatra mountains that were crossed with Ibex from the Middle East, causing the new crossed individuals to have calves in the coldest time of the year, with disastrous consequences.

What I get from this post is mostly you don’t understand anything about the beauty of nature and evolution and you have a kind of god complex. Take a quick look into our history, how many of human interventions in nature have actually turned out for the better in the end? A very very low amount. Speciation is continuously happening with the species that are already there. As long as we are not mucking this up too much (which we are actually doing now), nature will run its course and new species adapted to new habitats will appear anyway.



epiphyte said:


> I'm listening, I've read every reply, and I'm trying to address people's concerns.
> 
> I agree that the frog hobby won't become all hybrids. But there will certainly be plenty of hybrids, because people always want more options. Frogs are not an exception to this rule.
> 
> ...


Sorry, but that’s not how adaptability and diversity work with hybridisation, especially not in animals.



DPfarr said:


> I’m not sure if anyone else has read Carlos’s take on introducing epiphytes everywhere. Same stance.
> 
> Carlos, you do not understand genetics. If you take cat Aa Ab Ac and Ad to breed without selection you know what you’re going to end up with? A greater homogeneity of one phenotype and likely loss of alleles.
> 
> ...


This!



Organics said:


> But wouldn’t reducing genetic diversity by hybridization be putting too many eggs in one basket


Also this!




epiphyte said:


> I never said that people want watered down versions of anything. Hopefully genetic testing will become very affordable sooner rather than later. And then you'll know exactly what you're getting.
> 
> In this video though about hybrid cichlids...
> 
> ...


Genetic testing is actually very cheap already, but as pumilio said it should not be up to the buyer to have to test what you’re getting.







CarsonH said:


> I don't disagree with the lockdown and quarantine, I am actually a little further in the belief that even MORE stuff should be closed to limit the amount of people who get in touch with it.
> 
> However... If everyone got infected (and really, lets hope this doesn't happen, since I too have people I care about that may not make it through an infection) would the resulting survivors be better off? Solely on a reoccuring Coronavirus standpoint... Like, if the survivors got in touch with a NEW Covid like virus, would they have some underlying resistance? Even if marginal?


They might, it’s currently not clear yet how much immunity to this virus is created and maintained in the human body. However if we look at other corona viruses there is a very big chance that it will eventually become less deadly and fall within the category of nuisance diseases that return seasonally. However this might not happen until 2024, requiring up to four lockdown periods each year up till then (not making this up, this was modelled and published in a paper).

However the main issue we could run into is that this virus seems to be very capable of jumping between species and changing in the process. There are already several cases of cats getting it and mustelids are also apparently susceptible to getting it. The virus got to us in its current form by jumping between species (notably bats and pangolins) and changing in the process. Imagine this virus getting into Africa where stuff like ebola is present in wild bats. Mixing the infection rate of this virus with the deadlyness of ebola, that is something truly scary.


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## carola1155 (Sep 10, 2007)

epiphyte said:


> But since frog hybridization is also beneficial, it should be encouraged.


***CITATION NEEDED***

(Seriously- you keep making this claim but you have provided no evidence of its veracity.)


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## amolerane (Mar 15, 2020)

The reference to domesticated animals is moot. Read the book Tamed by professor Alice Roberts to understand what the genetic impact of domestication has on a species.

The aurochs became extinct in 1627. It filled an important ecological niche. Efforts to rewild parts of Europe require an animal to fill that niche. Domesticated cattle are descended from the aurochs and there is a breeding programme (Project Tauros) that tries to undo as much of the mixing that came as a result of domestication. Scientists can look at the genetic make up of some of the more ancient breeds of cattle to create a new strain that would meet the ecological need of the aurochs, but they cannot undo the inevitable entropy of aurochs DNA that has resulted from domestication. The aurochs is lost for good. The best Tauros can do is create a reasonable ecological facsimile. 

The big difference here is that modern cattle serve an agricultural function. There is no value in creating such hybrids in dart frogs. As carers of these animals, we should be at the forefront of determining their preservation. There is a responsibility for us to act appropriately given the known ecological state of our planet.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

I am not good at arguing stuff like this which is why I usually stay out of this stuff and some of what I am going to say has been touched on above. 

It seems like the big problem with the OP's stance is that an assumption is being made that hybridizing automatically yields desirable combinations of DNA. If I recall my basic biology (and it has been a couple of decades) there is a difference between phenotype (the traits that a critter shows) and genotype (all the behind-the-scenes DNA that doesn't show on the outside of the critter). Monkeying with the genetics of an animal, either by introducing new DNA via hybridization or by selective breeding, can result in exactly the phenotype you are looking for (strong horses with good endurance, for example) but you simply don't know what the impact on the genotype will be. You said that the world is a changing place, and I agree, but this is exactly why it is dangerous to mess with DNA. The world can easily change around to where some of the DNA that used to be present in the animal (crowded out by hybridization) is suddenly needed to contend with a new situation. 

This happens in crops, as I understand. You push so hard toward higher yield by adapting the DNA toward that characteristic that some new kind of pathogen comes through and wipes the crop out because it no longer has the genes necessary to contend with the new pathogen. If you introduce any sort of pressure on the genotype to favor one set of traits over another, you are potentially eliminating the ability of the critter to deal with different circumstances in the future. 

There have been so many good arguments against the OP's stance in this thread, but this is the one that worries me the most. We don't have a good handle on what all of the genes do and which ones are present in which individual and which ones might be needed someday. Therefore, any type of genetic manipulation is going to be hit and miss. We are already having trouble sourcing some kinds of wild frogs. We just can't afford to screw up the ones we have by experimenting with their genes.

Where I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, OP, is that we need to pay attention to the genes WITHIN the existing species and morphs. Avoiding breeding siblings to each other, that sort of thing, will keep our beloved species/morphs around for numerous generations without needing to replenish with new animals from the wild. We have some pretty good examples of what happens when the gene pool gets too shallow (I think Highland Sirensis before the recent introduction of European stock may fit as an example). So, let's pay attention to the sentiment, but hybridization is not necessary to do this, nor is it helpful in any way (maybe unless species numbers are so low that the Founder Effect comes into play).

Mark


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## macg (Apr 19, 2018)

I believe a thread like this is actually a good thing. Periodically reviewing and outlining the arguments for and against such a critical decision this community is making is good for new froggers to see. And whether the op intends to or not, it is now patently obvious to anyone reading this thread that the current community standard of not mixing is still the correct decision by far.

Thumbs up for the opportunity to reinforce that mixing is not beneficial (as long as we don't have the same discussion every month).


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

Kmc said:


> Okay, listen, you are in the wrong place. And you know it but you keep posting because you are enjoying being an irritant.
> 
> That shows some weird compulsivity or some other disordered behavior.
> 
> ...


This person is doing this same thing on other platforms, Ive just seen this exact same thing on Facebook


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

To the guys arguing saying its cool to mix up frog genetics... Find another hobby because you're not welcome in the dart frog community, I know don't speak for everyone but I have a large group of friends that have been keeping darts for decades and we all agree it's wrong... On other forums people that say it's ok to mix darts simply have their account deleted.


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

Couldn't agree more. We really don't want "pastel snowflake yadda yadda yadda" Tinctorius.

It would be one thing if folks who produced hybrids could keep them under THEIR control. But things change, it's inevitable. And the frogs you produced that you vowed would stay in your charge end up out in the "wild" (the hobby). And the further they get from the source, the less is known about who produced them and what the actual sh!t are they?

I feel strongly about this subject. 

USA Frogs is an abomination. 

Now, having said all of this, if hybrids are going to occur - they'll occur where they should. In nature. It's happened. This is evolution at work.

Evolution doesn't take place inside of glass cages.

s



cobe said:


> To the guys arguing saying its cool to mix up frog genetics... Find another hobby because you're not welcome in the dart frog community, I know don't speak for everyone but I have a large group of friends that have been keeping darts for decades and we all agree it's wrong... On other forums people that say it's ok to mix darts simply have their account deleted.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

cobe, out of curiosity, how is it being received on Facebook? Are people more open to his ideas or is he getting slammed over there, too?



cobe said:


> This person is doing this same thing on other platforms, Ive just seen this exact same thing on Facebook


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## Ravage (Feb 5, 2016)

The thread that keeps on giving:
Checking in this morning I saw tons of new, excellent information and for that alone, epiphyte has started an important thread. In light of the landslide of information, I would have kept my mouth shut, but there's one side effect I have yet to see. So here it is:
Iff hybridization were to become popular in the Dart frog hobby, those candy cane hybrids would become a dime a dozen PetCo specials ($9.99 out the door). Maybe not right away, but soon and then forever after. The original strains, held closely and curated by us old fogies, would soar in value because the true morphs would become even rarer and more prized. As human nature has proved over and over again: these "commodity" frogs would be mass produced and live hellish lives. In the end (just like the millions of perfectly good chickens that are now being euthanized) they'd serve no man nor purpose. The production of these hybrids would be simple vanity. And it would likely backfire, just like the snake markets.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

carola1155 said:


> ***CITATION NEEDED***
> 
> (Seriously- you keep making this claim but you have provided no evidence of its veracity.)


Hybridization as a conservation management tool



> The recent extensive loss of biodiversity raises the question of whether organisms will adapt in time to survive the current era of rapid environmental change, and whether today's conservation practices and policies are appropriate. We review the benefits and risks of inter‐ and intraspecific hybridization as a conservation management tool aimed at enhancing adaptive potential and survival, with particular reference to coral reefs. We conclude that hybridization is underutilized and that many of its perceived risks are possibly overstated; the few applications of hybridization in conservation to date have already shown positive outcomes. Moreover, perceptions of potential risk change significantly when the focus of conservation is on preserving the adaptive potential of a species/population, instead of preserving the species in its original state. Further, we suggest that the uncertain legal status of hybrids as entities of protection can be costly to society and ecosystems, and that a legislative revision of hybrids and hybridization is overdue. We present a decision tree to help assess when and where hybridization can be a suitable conservation tool, and whether inter‐ or intraspecific hybridization is the preferred option.


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

Not forget there is already a hybrid frog represented big time in the hobby. If you like hybrids, I'd say keep this one..

Most Epipedobates Anthonyi that 90% of us refers to as Tricolor, is a hybrid between different Epipedobates.. They are not pure blood Anthonyi.


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## bssknox (Apr 24, 2017)

Encyclia said:


> cobe, out of curiosity, how is it being received on Facebook? Are people more open to his ideas or is he getting slammed over there, too?


I've seen it come up a handful of times. I don't know who the OP is over on FB though, so if someone could PM me his name I'll know who to avoid...

Back to the Facebook posts though. They're not as widely slammed shut like they are here. Often times the posts started by someone new to the hobby posted a video or picture of their new frogs and sure enough, there's an Azuerus and a Citronella hopping around...and then it goes from there. Definitely a handful of people there saying "do what you want."


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

That's about what I would have thought. All the more important to keep this as a place where people can find good information as opposed to a place where people can mostly find a lot of information.

Mark



bssknox said:


> I've seen it come up a handful of times. I don't know who the OP is over on FB though, so if someone could PM me his name I'll know who to avoid...
> 
> Back to the Facebook posts though. They're not as widely slammed shut like they are here. Often times the posts started by someone new to the hobby posted a video or picture of their new frogs and sure enough, there's an Azuerus and a Citronella hopping around...and then it goes from there. Definitely a handful of people there saying "do what you want."


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

Encyclia said:


> cobe, out of curiosity, how is it being received on Facebook? Are people more open to his ideas or is he getting slammed over there, too?


I will give you a guess how it's going. Any person,In any country, think it's wrong other than a few trolling fan boys of course...


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

cobe said:


> I will give you a guess how it's going. Any person,In any country, think it's wrong other than a few trolling fan boys of course...


I wish this was more true. Seems like the "whatever you want" attitude is more and more prevalent, regardless of consequence.

Thanks for the answer.

Mark


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

Encyclia said:


> I wish this was more true. Seems like the "whatever you want" attitude is more and more prevalent, regardless of consequence.
> 
> Thanks for the answer.
> 
> Mark


What annoys me most is that someone spent the time getting the frogs from their locale then they select and breed these frogs. They document and spend so many hours and dedication to bring that frog into the trade for you and I to enjoy keeping. These frogs are then bought by someone with no regard for anything other than £$ breed it with whatever they can get their hands on. Sadly there is no way to keep away from people that do not give a crap about the animals. What I have found is that after time people that argue about mixing frogs and their sloppy animal keeping will realise that what other experienced keepers were saying was actually correct.


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## Ravage (Feb 5, 2016)

epiphyte said:


> Hybridization as a conservation management tool


I read it over lunch. There is some validity to hybridization as a technique to save endangered species. And I can see the temptation to apply that to our captive frogs. However, captive Dart frogs are not endangered. Wild ones, yes many are, but the two populations are forever separate and as dissimilar as one can imagine. The two are just not analogous. Any future choices to outbreed will be made by professionals, in the field to save populations, in the wild. That choice will not affect hobby frogs. Any perceived "need" for hybridization in the frog hobby is really just a Want. And everything I've said, and others have pointed out, still stands. If you want to see the dangers of designer frogs- just look at the designer snake market.
The authors of this study were not suggesting the use of hybridization for frivolous ends. You could ask them, most scientists are happy to chat and share their work and insights.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Ravage said:


> I read it over lunch. There is some validity to hybridization as a technique to save endangered species. And I can see the temptation to apply that to our captive frogs. However, captive Dart frogs are not endangered. Wild ones, yes many are, but the two populations are forever separate and as dissimilar as one can imagine. The two are just not analogous. Any future choices to outbreed will be made by professionals, in the field to save populations, in the wild. That choice will not affect hobby frogs. Any perceived "need" for hybridization in the frog hobby is really just a Want. And everything I've said, and others have pointed out, still stands. If you want to see the dangers of designer frogs- just look at the designer snake market.
> The authors of this study were not suggesting the use of hybridization for frivolous ends. You could ask them, most scientists are happy to chat and share their work and insights.


Most people in this thread have been arguing that hybridization is bad because it would taint the bloodlines. They want to keep the bloodlines pure for conservation purposes. Your argument, as best as I can tell, is that trying to keep the bloodlines pure is a moot point, giving the significant disparity between captive populations and wild ones. 

Your argument against hybridization is... designer frogs. 

What I know about demand for anything, frogs, food or cars, is that it is just as diverse as people are. 

And I agree that there is a genetic disparity between captive frogs and wild ones, given that they are subjected to very different selection pressures. But I disagree that this makes captive frogs useless for conservation purposes. As the paper points out, what matters is adaptability, which is a function of diversity. 

Hybridizing captive frogs will maximize their diversity, given that the demand is just as diverse as people are.


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

> "They want to keep the bloodlines pure for conservation purposes."


I don't believe so. We know the odds of any frogs of ours being used for repopulating a species is slim to none (not to say it hasn't happened, but extremely rare).

Me? I want to keep the bloodlines/localities for HOBBY purposes. As someone else in this thread has mentioned - once things start to get muddied it's hard to keep the original localities "pure".

And you'll find that most of the people that object, object for that reason.

That and if hybridization is going to happen, it should happen in the locality. Not in a glass cage.



> Hybridizing captive frogs will maximize their diversity, given that the demand is just as diverse as people are.


The "demand" from this is from "Newbs". And you apparently.


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## macg (Apr 19, 2018)

epiphyte said:


> Most people in this thread have been arguing that hybridization is bad because it would taint the bloodlines.


If we take your premise in the quote as true (and I'm not saying it is), there are still plenty of other reasons not to do it that have been outlined here. 

So I feel like the discussion has ended :-/


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## Scarecrow (Aug 28, 2017)

I don't have an issue with hybrid frogs as long as they're healthy, kept responsibly and not mislabelled and sold as something they're not. 

One thing to mention though is these creatures are quite a big responsibility. Dartfrogs can live up to 20 years and within that long span of time things can happen. Frogs may end up changing between owners and through these transactions information on the frogs origins can be lost. Identification is important within this hobby and all it takes is an uncaring/irresponsible owner to not keep track of their frogs origin and then sell them as something they're not to another person and it could potentially pollute a whole pure line of frogs and spread further from there. Many people want pure frogs, and the existence of hybrids in the hobby which on the surface could look very much like one of the parent species doesn't give them much peace of mind. 

tl;dr People want to know what they're paying for!


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

Exactly. I made this point a few posts ago. People *swear*, SWEAR!, they'll never let the frogs out of their possession.

It happens. Things change.



Scarecrow said:


> ... One thing to mention though is these creatures are quite a big responsibility. Dartfrogs can live up to 20 years and within that long span of time things can happen. Frogs may end up changing between owners and through these transactions information on the frogs origins can be lost.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Scott said:


> I don't believe so. We know the odds of any frogs of ours being used for repopulating a species is slim to none (not to say it hasn't happened, but extremely rare).
> 
> Me? I want to keep the bloodlines/localities for HOBBY purposes. As someone else in this thread has mentioned - once things start to get muddied it's hard to keep the original localities "pure".
> 
> And you'll find that most of the people that object, object for that reason.


I often encourage people in the Los Angeles area to grow orchids on their trees. If I tell people that they are going to have to water the orchids twice a day then nearly all of them would decline. Less would decline if I said that the orchids only needed to be watered once a day. And who would decline if I said that they didn't need to be watered at all. 

From my perspective each tree is essentially a Noah's Ark. An empty ark is a waste of an ark. It stands to reason that orchid hybrids are going to fill way more arks than orchid species on their own could fill. And from the perspective of the orchid family it is a good thing for more arks to be filled with orchids, even if they are hybrids, since it means greater diversity, which means faster adaptability. 

Just like I perceive a tree to be an ark, I also perceive a terrarium to be an ark. And if you don't have even a single orchid in a terrarium then I'm going to see that as a problem. Just like I see it as a problem if a tree doesn't have a single orchid on it. 

Just like you would see it as a problem if there's a pet store on fire and somebody runs out only carrying one animal. Or some better analogy. 

If you love dart frogs then you should want them to be in as many arks as possible, which is something that can best be achieved by hybridization. 

Rain forests and cloud forests and tropical dry forests are being chopped down on a daily basis and replaced with roads and shopping centers and stupid stadiums. Should we donate to help compete land away from developers? Sure. Should we write our congresspeople? Sure, why not. But we should also endeavor to fill up as many arks as we can fill. It is something that is well within our range of effectiveness. 

1. it is beneficial to fill as many arks as possible 
2. species and hybrids together are going to fill more arks than species alone


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## krzydmnd (Mar 20, 2020)

as a new entrant to keeping dart frogs, I'd hoped to find a helpful community here, and learn from everyone who has opinions and experience (successes and failures). what I did not expect to see (silly me, it is the internet after all) is having a forum member post his opinion in a non-troll like manner, and be completely berated, personal attacks, and suggested he leave, quit the hobby, etc... 

wow, some of you are brutal behind those mighty keyboards.


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

The amount of scientific ignorance on display in this thread by a certain someone is *staggering*. 

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

krzydmnd said:


> as a new entrant to keeping dart frogs, I'd hoped to find a helpful community here, and learn from everyone who has opinions and experience (successes and failures). what I did not expect to see (silly me, it is the internet after all) is having a forum member post his opinion in a non-troll like manner, and be completely berated, personal attacks, and suggested he leave, quit the hobby, etc...
> 
> wow, some of you are brutal behind those mighty keyboards.


The same would happen (i have seen it) if someone said that they had sneaked in their own frogs from a holiday they went on and offered them for sale to other keepers. 

What this person is saying is hitting a nerve with real frog keepers. As for keyboard warriors, you are wrong people are actually being quite civil, i've seen it get a whole lot worse.


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

TarantulaGuy said:


> The amount of scientific ignorance on display in this thread by a certain someone is *staggering*.
> 
> Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


It appears you do not need facts, just the ability to type on a keyboard and find links from someone who also has the ability to type without facts....


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

epiphyte said:


> If you love dart frogs then you should want them to be in as many arks as possible, which is something that can best be achieved by hybridization.


Can you provide a reference to a paper that establishes that hybridization benefits the population (micro or macro level) from a paper on amphibians in a peer reviewed scientific journal?


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## macg (Apr 19, 2018)

krzydmnd said:


> as a new entrant to keeping dart frogs, I'd hoped to find a helpful community here, and learn from everyone who has opinions and experience (successes and failures). what I did not expect to see (silly me, it is the internet after all) is having a forum member post his opinion in a non-troll like manner, and be completely berated, personal attacks, and suggested he leave, quit the hobby, etc...
> 
> 
> 
> wow, some of you are brutal behind those mighty keyboards.


I disagree with some of the tones as well. There are some other threads about this specific topic if you would like to pick up the discussion there.

In this case for now, it's helpful to look past any of the poor tones and choice of words and focus on all the arguments given. Careful readers will notice that good arguments are ignored by the party that finds them detrimental. I find this is usually why internet discussions go on for too long, as this one has.

Read carefully everyone, and look past the emotions for the moment. Please keep in mind that there are years of pain behind some of these responses. It doesn't make the tones taken appropriate, but it gives context we can use to understand one another.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

I'm with macg that I don't really support the tone of many of the posts in this thread, but I do understand where it comes from. What this person is proposing could not have higher stakes for our hobby. I agree that they are being extremely civil and continuing to engage in this topic, but what they are saying comes solely from what they wish was the case rather than what science tells us. If you look past the vitriol and personal attacks, there are good, scientifically-founded arguments against hybridization; arguments that the original poster is largely ignoring. The OP is arguing not from a scientific point of view but from a purely subjective point of view that couldn't be more biased. He/she has an agenda and is going to push it in whatever way he/she can. 

The real problem here is that the people on this board who have invested so much in the hobby and in this board have no choice but to address this viewpoint. Being a new person to the hobby makes it tougher understand the stakes of this argument. This viewpoint represents an existential threat to the hobby as it stands. If the OP's vision for the hobby came true, it would no longer be the hobby that we have enjoyed for decades. It would be something so different that I, and many others, would no longer choose to participate in it. That may be no big deal for folks that are new or that come from other branches of herpdom, but it couldn't be more important for the dart frog community. 

The OP said in their very first sentence of the thread that they knew how their viewpoint would be received. This was deliberate provocation by the admission of the OP, as far as I am concerned. There was never any interest in a civil dialog where we achieve some kind of middle ground. The OP is dug in and knew already that we were, as well. The OP came in here to disturb the peace and force this community to come out in defense of the hobby that we hold dear, and to make us look bad while we do that. Mission accomplished, as far as I am concerned. HOWEVER, it spite of how much damage to the community aspect of the board has been done (and as cobe pointed out, it could have been a whole lot worse), it is STILL worth it because folks reading this that don't have the experience and investment in the hobby need to understand that hybrids are not the best thing for the hobby or any of the frogs in it. 

That's just my $0.02, anyway.

Mark



krzydmnd said:


> as a new entrant to keeping dart frogs, I'd hoped to find a helpful community here, and learn from everyone who has opinions and experience (successes and failures). what I did not expect to see (silly me, it is the internet after all) is having a forum member post his opinion in a non-troll like manner, and be completely berated, personal attacks, and suggested he leave, quit the hobby, etc...
> 
> wow, some of you are brutal behind those mighty keyboards.


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## Broseph (Dec 5, 2011)

The tone of responses might seem harsh because OP seems to be blatantly ignoring logical arguments against their position. And their position has the potential to do actual and irreversible harm to the hobby as valued by most here. 

Also, I might just be jaded, but I don’t think I’m the only one here who suspects this may be astroturfing by a party that stands to benefit from the proposed procedures. 

To be fair, I think A LOT of stuff in the internet is astroturfing. Brb, adjusting my tinfoil hat.


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

Broseph said:


> The tone of responses might seem harsh because OP seems to be blatantly ignoring logical arguments against their position. And their position has the potential to do actual and irreversible harm to the hobby as valued by most here.
> 
> Also, I might just be jaded, but I don’t think I’m the only one here who suspects this may be astroturfing by a party that stands to benefit from the proposed procedures.
> 
> To be fair, I think A LOT of stuff in the internet is astroturfing. Brb, adjusting my tinfoil hat.


This! Well said...


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

epiphyte said:


> If you love dart frogs then you should want them to be in as many arks as possible, which is something that can best be achieved by hybridization.
> 
> 1. it is beneficial to fill as many arks as possible
> 2. species and hybrids together are going to fill more arks than species alone


I think this is faulty logic, yes they should be in as many "arks" (if you will) as possible. But there is no reason to hybridise them if you can just as easily keep the species in those "arks". Like I said before, build the enclosure for the animals, not the other way around. This also makes point 2 invalid. And again, plants and animals don't compare at all, especially when it comes to hybridising.


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

Broseph said:


> The tone of responses might seem harsh because OP seems to be blatantly ignoring logical arguments against their position. And their position has the potential to do actual and irreversible harm to the hobby as valued by most here.
> 
> Also, I might just be jaded, but I don’t think I’m the only one here who suspects this may be astroturfing by a party that stands to benefit from the proposed procedures.


Actually not only to the hobby, his suggestion is to do this on a much bigger scale.


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## Broseph (Dec 5, 2011)

epiphyte said:


> Just like I perceive a tree to be an ark, I also perceive a terrarium to be an ark. And if you don't have even a single orchid in a terrarium then I'm going to see that as a problem. Just like I see it as a problem if a tree doesn't have a single orchid on it.
> 
> 1. it is beneficial to fill as many arks as possible
> 2. species and hybrids together are going to fill more arks than species alone


As long as we're using fairy tales to justify our positions...

We can think of Hansel and Gretel, and the evil witch wanting to mix them together into a pie for her own benefit, much to the detriment of the 
f̶r̶o̶g̶s̶ Hansel and Gretel.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Johanovich said:


> I think this is faulty logic, yes they should be in as many "arks" (if you will) as possible. But there is no reason to hybridise them if you can just as easily keep the species in those "arks". Like I said before, build the enclosure for the animals, not the other way around. This also makes point 2 invalid. And again, plants and animals don't compare at all, especially when it comes to hybridising.


So you agree that dart frogs should be in as many arks as possible, cool. 

However, you expect people to build an ark specifically for a dart frog rather than choose a dart frog which will do best in their preexisting ark.

The more work required to keep a plant or animal, the fewer people will keep it. In terms of plants, far more people here in Southern California grow Platycerium bifurcatum than Platycerium ridleyi, given that ridleyii needs a greenhouse. 

If there was the dart frog equivalent of Platycerium bifurcatum then it would be kept in far more arks. This can certainly be achieved selecting within species, except it would take far more time than hybridizing. 

Also, creating hybrids suitable for a wider range of preexisting arks inherently means a deeper and wider gene pool, which means greater adaptability.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Encyclia said:


> The OP is arguing not from a scientific point of view but from a purely subjective point of view that couldn't be more biased.


Maybe you missed this paper I shared...

Hybridization as a conservation management tool



> The recent extensive loss of biodiversity raises the question of whether organisms will adapt in time to survive the current era of rapid environmental change, and whether today's conservation practices and policies are appropriate. We review the benefits and risks of inter‐ and intraspecific hybridization as a conservation management tool aimed at enhancing adaptive potential and survival, with particular reference to coral reefs. We conclude that hybridization is underutilized and that many of its perceived risks are possibly overstated; the few applications of hybridization in conservation to date have already shown positive outcomes. Moreover, perceptions of potential risk change significantly when the focus of conservation is on preserving the adaptive potential of a species/population, instead of preserving the species in its original state. Further, we suggest that the uncertain legal status of hybrids as entities of protection can be costly to society and ecosystems, and that a legislative revision of hybrids and hybridization is overdue. We present a decision tree to help assess when and where hybridization can be a suitable conservation tool, and whether inter‐ or intraspecific hybridization is the preferred option.


1. Hybridizing dart frogs would create a wider/deeper gene pool
2. A larger gene pool would mean greater adaptive potential

hybridization -> more variety -> greater adaptability


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

epiphyte said:


> So you agree that dart frogs should be in as many arks as possible, cool.
> 
> However, you expect people to build an ark specifically for a dart frog rather than choose a dart frog which will do best in their preexisting ark.
> 
> ...


I already told you this hybrid species exist... EPIPEDOBATES ANTHONYI
READ and try to understand the comments!!!

People ALWAYS should build a tank for a specific species of frogs.. That's why so many animals in vaptivity die on a yearly base, people buy first and ask questions later.. Preexsisting tanks.. what do you even mean by this? As far as I understand a preexsisting ark in our terms is a glas box?

THIS IS EXACTLY THE LESSON THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT HERE! People should research the animal they want to keep first and build an 'ark' for them. 
This is what possibly helps many species to thrive in captivity.. not your 'Hybridtheory'..


Again ; 
YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT YOU ARE PREACHING ABOUT.


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

Its very clear to me you don't value the lives and uniqueness of our frogs at all.. These are living beings we are talking about, not just disposable luxury items..


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Am i the only one who thinks that the more mainstream some pursuits get, the lower standards become?

I dont care about full arks (wtf..) I dont care if any area of herpetoculture gets more people in it. I havent seen that to be a plus in many ways. Broad brush strokes dipped in cheese.

OP keeps repeating this "adaptability" dubious mantra. Im getting the impression - that what is desired by OP is for frogs to become an "easier to keep" live ornamental toy; where less needs to be learned, less needs to be cared for.

This mentality has made many good things cheapen from their original state. As soon as opportunism gets their sweaty hands on it, it mutates into a product. I see it as a disease of market culture. 

There isnt much that can be done about anthropocentrics once they wrap a special interest in red cellophane but those of us who dont suscribe should have the right to keep our discipline uncorrupted by their recklessness.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

epiphyte said:


> Maybe you missed this paper I shared...
> 
> Hybridization as a conservation management tool
> 
> ...


No, I saw it...I just don't think it means what you think it means. The whole article is in the context of conservation of at-risk ecosystems. If you check the list of factors that should be considered before hybridizing (Section 5, 3rd bullet), "really wanting frogs in as many arks as possible" doesn't make the list. Also, check the handy flow chart. The very first box says "Is there a high risk of environmental deterioration under anthropogenic stress including climate change?" and the answer to that one has to be "No" for me. End of flow chart. We control the frogs' environments nearly completely. I think you are interpreting this article far too broadly and it doesn't apply in this context. 

Mark


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Tijl said:


> People should research the animal they want to keep first and build an 'ark' for them.





> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman


Progress can be made with everything, including dart frogs. The most progress in the least time can be made with dart frogs by hybridizing them.


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## bssknox (Apr 24, 2017)

epiphyte said:


> So you agree that dart frogs should be in as many arks as possible, cool.
> 
> However, you expect people to build an ark specifically for a dart frog rather than choose a dart frog which will do best in their preexisting ark.
> 
> ...


I just don't get the justification...You can literally keep a dart frog in an enclosed 10g tank with wet paper towels and it would survive. If someone is incapable of providing a proper environment, then they should stick with gerbils or an ant farm. I think most people in the hobby truly enjoy creating a thriving vivarium almost as much as the frogs themselves.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Intelligent Newbies will certainly discern the kookiness and inherent weakness of the OPs position.

I agree we should keep posting.

I apologize for harsh tones in some of my previous comments, I apologize to fellow Dendroboard members, not so much to OP, though being kind is important, even through contention.

I dont respond to passive aggression well, and the subject material comes close to the actual physical sensation of nausea.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Encyclia said:


> No, I saw it...I just don't think it means what you think it means. The whole article is in the context of conservation of at-risk ecosystems. If you check the list of factors that should be considered before hybridizing (Section 5, 3rd bullet), "really wanting frogs in as many arks as possible" doesn't make the list. Also, check the handy flow chart. The very first box says "Is there a high risk of environmental deterioration under anthropogenic stress including climate change?" and the answer to that one has to be "No" for me. End of flow chart. We control the frogs' environments nearly completely. I think you are interpreting this article far too broadly and it doesn't apply in this context.
> 
> Mark


In order for frogs to be in as many arks as possible, they need to be able to thrive in the widest possible range of conditions, which is what adaptability is all about. 

Do you want dart frogs to thrive in the widest possible range of conditions? If not, do you want them to thrive in the narrowest possible range of conditions?


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

epiphyte said:


> So you agree that dart frogs should be in as many arks as possible, cool.
> 
> However, you expect people to build an ark specifically for a dart frog rather than choose a dart frog which will do best in their preexisting ark.
> 
> ...


Bear in mind I clearly see this "ark" thing very differently then you do. I do not see every tree as a "must be colonised by an orchid or something else" thing. On the contrary I am highly opposed to introducing foreign species in habitats in the wild where they don't belong. This is what I consider a practice to royally screw nature. Similarly I do not see a glass box and think "there needs to be one frog in there that has as many species mixed into it as possible". Instead I think of a frog that I like, then think of how bog of a glass box I would need to make this work for that species and then work to make that glass box an "ark" for that frog. So yes I fully expect people to put in work to keep dart frogs, it show commitment and dedication and generally speaking, people enjoy things more that required them to do a bit of work.

There is nothing wrong with fewer people keeping these animals, especially if these people are dedicated to the hobby and the animals. You can achieve more with two people who take this seriously than with 100 people who don't care and let the animals suffer in suboptimal conditions. Those dedicated people can make sure that as little as possible genetic diversity will disappear by avoiding inbreeding as much as possible. There is a nice calculation I came across a while back that illustrated how many generations you can keep "fresh" with how many animals. If someone knows what I'm referring to and has a link, please feel free to share!


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

I think this person is from the crappy dart frog place that crosses frogs, makes up ice creamish names and is trying to be like the ball python sellers. 

I sniff Sneaky, under the Kooky.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

bssknox said:


> I just don't get the justification...You can literally keep a dart frog in an enclosed 10g tank with wet paper towels and it would survive. If someone is incapable of providing a proper environment, then they should stick with gerbils or an ant farm. I think most people in the hobby truly enjoy creating a thriving vivarium almost as much as the frogs themselves.


How much dryness can dart frogs survive? I'm sure that plenty of people have learned this the hard way. Same thing with Pleurothallids. 

Pleurothallids and dart frogs are continually being unintentionally selected for drought tolerance. Since Pleurothallids are being somewhat hybridized we can expect them to make more progress in terms of drought tolerance than dart frogs. 

Is it beneficial for there to exist Pleurothallids and dart frogs that are more drought tolerant? Yes. Very yes. This is why hybridization is equally beneficial for both Pleurothallids and dart frogs.


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

epiphyte said:


> Progress can be made with everything, including dart frogs. The most progress in the least time can be made with dart frogs by hybridizing them.


Proof? What are you proposing to hybridize dart frogs with? What is this "progress" you seek?

You throw around adaptability as if it's the be all, end all, of all things in life.

Does the earth NEED dart frogs to be adapted to live in a desert? In ice? Underwater? 

Or is your argument for hybridization really trying to create the next consumer reptile?


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

epiphyte said:


> How much dryness can dart frogs survive? I'm sure that plenty of people have learned this the hard way. Same thing with Pleurothallids.
> 
> Pleurothallids and dart frogs are continually being unintentionally selected for drought tolerance. Since Pleurothallids are being somewhat hybridized we can expect them to make more progress in terms of drought tolerance than dart frogs.
> 
> Is it beneficial for there to exist Pleurothallids and dart frogs that are more drought tolerant? Yes. Very yes. This is why hybridization is equally beneficial for both Pleurothallids and dart frogs.


Except plants and animals don't work the same way, especially with regards to hybridisation.



Encyclia said:


> No, I saw it...I just don't think it means what you think it means. The whole article is in the context of conservation of at-risk ecosystems. If you check the list of factors that should be considered before hybridizing (Section 5, 3rd bullet), "really wanting frogs in as many arks as possible" doesn't make the list. Also, check the handy flow chart. The very first box says "Is there a high risk of environmental deterioration under anthropogenic stress including climate change?" and the answer to that one has to be "No" for me. End of flow chart. We control the frogs' environments nearly completely. I think you are interpreting this article far too broadly and it doesn't apply in this context.
> 
> Mark


Thank you, now I don't have to type this response


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Johanovich said:


> Bear in mind I clearly see this "ark" thing very differently then you do. I do not see every tree as a "must be colonised by an orchid or something else" thing. On the contrary I am highly opposed to introducing foreign species in habitats in the wild where they don't belong. This is what I consider a practice to royally screw nature.


A planet destroying asteroid is heading straight for earth and our only option is to bravely run away. Everybody collaborates in building a bunch of arks. How should dart frogs be distributed among all the arks? Would you suggest putting all the dart frogs in one ark? If not, then why not?


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

epiphyte said:


> A planet destroying asteroid is heading straight for earth and our only option is to bravely run away. Everybody collaborates in building a bunch of arks. How should dart frogs be distributed among all the arks? Would you suggest putting all the dart frogs in one ark? If not, then why not?


Right, because a doomsday metaphor is the way to convince people that hybridization is a good idea...


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

fishingguy12345 said:


> Proof? What are you proposing to hybridize dart frogs with? What is this "progress" you seek?
> 
> You throw around adaptability as if it's the be all, end all, of all things in life.
> 
> ...


Nobody has a crystal ball. Our planet in the future might be hotter, drier, colder, wetter. Organisms hedge their bets accordingly. Except for those that rely on asexual reproduction, but even they don't always produce perfect clones, given mutations and what not. 

Sexual reproduction produces a much bigger hedge than asexual production. Far more progress in far less time has been made with sexual reproduction than with asexual reproduction. 

Hybridization produces the biggest possible hedge, which means that it will maximize the future's biodiversity.


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

I think I may be getting what this is about now.
I went to Mexico about 15 ish years ago to see an orchid meristem culture facility. I had a great time chatting to a couple of the guys that worked there (they were German and Dutch) they showed me around and it was amazing. Most of he plants they were propagating were pretty rare. One of the guys explained that quite a few of these plants will go onto the market but they will have to get crossed with hardier species. He said this can in some cases make that plant become less colourful etc it will make it easier to grow in the home and therefore can be sold on the shelves of department stores. 

So it has dawned on me, these people that want to cross breed want to make dart frogs easier to keep? that is the only conclusion I can come to....

On this basis I think its best if they ask Mummy and Daddy to buy them a rabbit as that would be a whole world easier for them.
I love keeping darts and the harder they are to keep, the harder i work to keep them happy....

Just my 2 cents...


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

cobe said:


> I love keeping darts and the harder they are to keep, the harder i work to keep them happy....
> 
> Just my 2 cents...


There are plenty of challenging orchids. Their number isn't diminished by the existence of an even greater quantity of easy orchids. 

I'm arguing for _more_ options. You make it sound like I'm trying to take your preferred options away from you. 

Species and hybrids are not mutually exclusive. Some people will prefer the hybrids, while other people will prefer the species. The diversity of people's preferences is what will ensure an equally diverse supply. 

The dart frog community's resistance to hybridization is counterproductive to the community and to the future of dart frogs.


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## Xue (Mar 2, 2020)

Oh No! Not this again...

The other mixing thread was about disease and the argument against it was because of possibilities of creating a new virus. 

This one is about diversification and the argument against it is because of purity?


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

To all those making thoughtful, concise arguments in this thread, you need to understand that, if past interactions are any indication, the OP WILL NOT change his/her position, NO MATTER WHAT. This thread is rolling out in exactly the same way every other similar thread created by Epiphyte has, with a bunk argument based on personal desire, not science, or interest in the existing ecosystem with all its beautiful intricacies. Corner the OP with one set of facts, and they will shift their reasoning to an unrelated argument, or ignore your post all together (and yes, one can even reply to a post while still ignoring or dismissing the content. 

So please, don't take it personally if you don't even make a dent in their world view, regardless of how much sense you are making...and the mods appreciate that most involved here have kept name-calling and personal attacks out of the thread.

I am really glad, however, to see how this thread has blown up with an overwhelming torrent of general consensus in favor of natural order, but I would expect nothing less from the vast majority of dedicated froggers or DB.


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

Xue said:


> Oh No! Not this again...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This thread isn't ACTUALLY about diversification / purity ...

To the OP, I'd have far more respect for your argument if you were actually upfront about your goal. 

It's not Increased genetic diversity you seek, it's not adaptability, it's designer frogs running the gamut of the rainbow for sale to gullible consumers. The creation of the Cockapoo or Labradoodle of frogs, the super pastel striped / spotted ball python.


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## Guest (Apr 30, 2020)

epiphyte said:


> In order for frogs to be in as many arks as possible, they need to be able to thrive in the widest possible range of conditions, which is what adaptability is all about.
> 
> Do you want dart frogs to thrive in the widest possible range of conditions? If not, do you want them to thrive in the narrowest possible range of conditions?


I think you should maybe go grab a copy of "On the Origin of Species" and brush up. Adaptability is not about being able to survive in the widest range of conditions possible, up front. 

Further, to sort of play off of my remarks earlier in the thread, Hybridizing to somehow strengthen the species.. put them in as many "arks" as possible(which by the way.. I find your use of "diluvian" terminology humorous).. however you want to phrase it.. it's myopic to say that by giving something the widest range of habitable environments.. to make them stronger is better. Speaking specifically in regards to hybridization of frogs to save wild populations - you don't stop to consider that they are only a single piece in a massive ecological puzzle. Perhaps by making them stronger they outcompete another species, or another animal altogether. Or you create an animal that is a viral or fungal reservoir, now able to venture to areas outside its natural range, and infects animals previously unaffected. This is particularly troubling for pet animals that are released into non-native environments.. Have a chat some time with the Florida NPS about "pets" in the wild. 

The bottom line, regardless of whether you are speaking of captivity or wild, is that your premise is flawed(as has been indicated many times in this thread), and so everything else that follows is also flawed.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

fishingguy12345 said:


> This thread isn't ACTUALLY about diversification / purity ...
> 
> To the OP, I'd have far more respect for your argument if you were actually upfront about your goal.
> 
> It's not Increased genetic diversity you seek, it's not adaptability, it's designer frogs running the gamut of the rainbow for sale to gullible consumers. The creation of the Cockapoo or Labradoodle of frogs, the super pastel striped / spotted ball python.


Biodiversity is my favorite thing. Well, actually economics is my very favorite thing because it can help us maximize biodiversity. 

Imagine if hummingbirds were introduced to Africa. Would they survive? It depends on how adaptable they are. But if they did survive then they would diversify the supply of flowers. All else being equal, an increase in the diversity of the demand will result in an increase in the diversity of the supply. 

Right now there is already a diverse demand for dart frogs. Most of this demand though isn't being met because of the community's stance against hybridization. If the community reversed its stance then the supply of dart frogs would quickly become just as diverse as the demand for them. 

And would the dart frog equivalents of Cockapoos or Labradoodles be created? Undoubtedly. But so would the dart frog equivalent of Aloe Hercules. If I want people to choose better options, which of course I do, then it is my job to try and persuade them. 

More options means more progress, and more progress is just as important for dart frogs as it is for everything else in life.


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## Rain_Frog (Apr 27, 2004)

I hate to play devil's advocate, but just throwing this out there. Honestly, I have found over the years that many froggers who have claimed to be "in it for conservation" are also the same people who continue to support unsustainable harvesting of WC frogs, as well as don't want any regulation of their hobby regardless of chytrid, ranaviruses, etc. There is a possibility that highland sirensis is no longer found in the wild because of smuggling. Not saying anyone here participated in that, but even the "purebred" supporters have a dark side. Most of our animals can never be released back into the wild either due to possibility of disease transfer.

A lot of the arguments are more cultural within the dart frog community against actual hybrids, partly because we have so many morphs available, and the value of "rare" morphs. That's another thing, is the price of dart frogs that keeps the mentality of the purebred morph, so now its socially unacceptable in the community to crossbreed. I myself would not be interested in a tinc cross bred with auratus or a different morph. Frogs like "no dot azureus," chocolate leucs, super blue auratus, etc, are all linebred, which is really no different than intentional crossbreeding because its artificial selection. So I honestly could not care less if people want to hybridize or cross their own lines of frogs for their own vivariums. There are a few experienced froggers (not going to mention names) who have done it and just kept the frogs for their own display purposes but clearly labeled them what they were crossed with.

So do I support it? Generally no, but locale and morph data is a luxury that only dart frog keepers have whereas a lot of other frogs like mantellas that unfortunately get shafted have no locale data and with recent research, could be accidental species crossbreeds as well, such as Mantella ebenaui is now split into betsileo and ebenaui.

But the situation in China with Chinese giant salamanders illustrates the importance of why captive bred wildlife should be kept pure, and why its important to keep track of genetics and keeping a population pure. There was an article a while back that there is higher genetic diversity with the captive tiger population then there is in the wild, but enough of the captive population is pure in order to potentially help restock wild populations. So, while at this time, our dart frogs cannot be sent back into the wild, there is a possibility we might have to someday. If China was more diligent with the salamanders on their farms, we wouldn't have the mess we have now.


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

epiphyte said:


> Biodiversity is my favorite thing. Well, actually economics is my very favorite thing because it can help us maximize biodiversity.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


*Rolls eyes* 

what diverse demand for dart frogs isn't being met? Please be specific.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Yes could the OP provide a straight not specious, non metaphoric answer to the above.

Then afterwards could OP provide *an actual hybridizing example of two dendrobates forms, and HOW the result would be a more "adaptable" dart frog, and What is it that is being desired it "adapt" to. *

Plain examples with accompanying answers no arks or asteroids.


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## DPfarr (Nov 24, 2017)

epiphyte said:


> 1. Hybridizing dart frogs would create a wider/deeper gene pool
> 2. A larger gene pool would mean greater adaptive potential
> 
> hybridization -> more variety -> greater adaptability


1. No. You do not understand genetics. 
2. No. See point 1.


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## macg (Apr 19, 2018)

OP is using a lot of argumentative strategies that I get the feeling I've heard of cult leaders using. Anyone else get that feeling? Is there someone with experience in this that can outline if that is the case?

I don't mean to digress with this, but the circles being traveled here deserve some meta analysis to reveal what may actually be going on if possible.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Working backwards and I really debated whether any comments in this thread have any value. 



Rain_Frog said:


> Most of our animals can never be released back into the wild either due to possibility of disease transfer.


And adaptation to captivity which has been repeatedly demonstrated to lower survivorship of offspring in the wild in multiple taxa. The fact that the hobby chooses to not maximize genetic diversity in the hobby as close to the date of collection has rendered the captive populations non-viable for repatriation even if the wild populations go extinct. Instead it would be much more viable to choose a nearby locality as opposed to using captive populations. This is a situation the hobby as a whole has chosen to create and perpetuate. If you think your frogs could end up in the wild if the wild populations go extinct, your part of the problem. 



Rain_Frog said:


> Frogs like "no dot azureus," chocolate leucs, super blue auratus, etc, are all linebred, which is really no different than intentional crossbreeding because its artificial selection. So I honestly could not care less if people want to hybridize or cross their own lines of frogs for their own vivariums.


Unbelievable, equating line breeding with hybridizing?!? There is a huge difference in impact, line bred animals can be crossed back into the originating population while you can never recover the species diversity from a crossbreeding/hybridizing event. A fine spot azureus is still an azureus and can be bred back to a regular azureus, a powder blue tinctorius crossed with an azureus cannot be crossed back to either population/morph. Its a huge difference and really is a problem to espouse. 





Rain_Frog said:


> There was an article a while back that there is higher genetic diversity with the captive tiger population then there is in the wild,


What paper?? This is a very dubious claim. 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

macg said:


> OP is using a lot of argumentative strategies that I get the feeling I've heard of cult leaders using. Anyone else get that feeling? Is there someone with experience in this that can outline if that is the case?
> 
> I don't mean to digress with this, but the circles being traveled here deserve some meta analysis to reveal what may actually be going on if possible.


It happens every so often where some people get bored and decide to try and rile up the readers regardless of what ever they actually believe. They often only stay involved enough to try and get people to respond and the greater the response the more they enjoy it. 

Just point to the threads that demonstrate the issues with outbreeding depression or cite some of the newer papers as evidence contradicting the post as they won't be able to defend against actual documented science. 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Xue said:


> Oh No! Not this again...
> 
> The other mixing thread was about disease and the argument against it was because of possibilities of creating a new virus.


Well, its now clear that moving animals from their natal location to others without sterilizing all of the waste is the origin of all of the pathogenic anuran chytrid strains. The movement of the non-native species and putting them in contact with other amphibians allowed the exchange of genes between different strains of chytrid resulting in the hypervirulent strains killing animals across the world. 

see Greenspan, S. E., et al. "Hybrids of amphibian chytrid show high virulence in native hosts." Scientific reports 8.1 (2018): 9600. 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

cobe said:


> So it has dawned on me, these people that want to cross breed want to make dart frogs easier to keep? that is the only conclusion I can come to....


Virtually all of the dendrobatids have had their care reduced to recipes that do not require any indepth knowledge of the animals. This can be seen in many threads such as the commonly passed along dogma on keeping female tinctorious together or spatial needs of the frogs. 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Johanovich said:


> There is nothing wrong with fewer people keeping these animals, especially if these people are dedicated to the hobby and the animals. You can achieve more with two people who take this seriously than with 100 people who don't care and let the animals suffer in suboptimal conditions. Those dedicated people can make sure that as little as possible genetic diversity will disappear by avoiding inbreeding as much as possible. There is a nice calculation I came across a while back that illustrated how many generations you can keep "fresh" with how many animals. If someone knows what I'm referring to and has a link, please feel free to share!


Hardy-Weinberg equation and one of the extinction routes is via hybridization. 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Encyclia said:


> No, I saw it...I just don't think it means what you think it means. The whole article is in the context of conservation of at-risk ecosystems. If you check the list of factors that should be considered before hybridizing (Section 5, 3rd bullet), "really wanting frogs in as many arks as possible" doesn't make the list. Also, check the handy flow chart. The very first box says "Is there a high risk of environmental deterioration under anthropogenic stress including climate change?" and the answer to that one has to be "No" for me. End of flow chart. We control the frogs' environments nearly completely. I think you are interpreting this article far too broadly and it doesn't apply in this context.
> 
> Mark


Actually the attempt to use that paper as justification for hybridization in captivity is a false assumption. Captive conditions do not have the selection pressures that occur on the resulting combinations weeding out gene combinations that are maladaptive. Captivity only removes those gene combinations that are maladaptive in captive populations (and which make them unusable for release). The claims of a frog being more drought resistant etc are specious as they are not going to be subjected to those selection pressures so any attempt to discuss it is without value. 

In cases where animals are used in conservation release programs the standard isn't no hybridization ever (except in funding by the USFW) but only as a absolute last result when the population is imminently going to go extinct under the current genetic load and hybridization may not save that population as heterosis is only seen in the F1 generation and outbreeding depression (which can involve sterility or other things that render the offspring non-viable) can persist as long as 5 generations. Currently there are no known captive populations of dart frogs known to be in that much peril. 

For a good overview on this see Edmands, Suzanne. "Between a rock and a hard place: evaluating the relative risks of inbreeding and outbreeding for conservation and management." Molecular ecology 16.3 (2007): 463-475. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Kmc said:


> Am i the only one who thinks that the more mainstream some pursuits get, the lower standards become?


That's because the care of the animal is reduced to following a recipe as opposed to actually understanding the needs of a species and working to meet them beyond the minimum. The bar on whether an animal is getting good care is whether it breeds or not regardless if it is grossly obese or exhibiting abnormal behaviors (like obligate egg feeders laying fertile clutches while feeding tadpoles) or only lives a short time compared to wild counterparts. People place status on having uncommon or rare species (even if those species were common a few years ago) and status on breeding the frogs, not any of the real indicators of quality care such as longevity or normal behaviors. This has been an issue for years in the hobby. 



Kmc said:


> OP keeps repeating this "adaptability" dubious mantra. Im getting the impression - that what is desired by OP is for frogs to become an "easier to keep" live ornamental toy; where less needs to be learned, less needs to be cared for.


Its a fallacy... all of the examples of adaptability are not going to be determinable in captivity as those selection pressures are simply not present and as such is a false premise on why hybridization should occur in captivity. 
In addition, the frogs are already under selection pressure to adapt to captivity without the need to hybridize them. The selection pressures to increase survivorship in captivity are already there without hybridization so there is no need for an extensive response to the argument. Just point out the frogs are already under those pressures without hybridization and in fact hybridization could actually be a detriment for that gene selection, 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

houtenziel said:


> .
> 
> However, as to somehow producing a hardier frog in the wild..


This isn't even a viable argument on his part as the frogs would have to be in the wild exposed to all of the natural selection pressures for this to be viable. Its not like plants where you can create all of the environmental pressures in a greenhouse and use cultured pathogens. You'd have to be able to include predation pressures by spiders, birds, snakes, parasites and pathogens that are from the exact location the frog would be destined to be released. Its all a specious argument on the part of the OP as excepting actually releasing the frogs it can't be tested in captivity (as you'd have to also include multiple pathogen-parasite and environmental exposures at the same time for the life span of the animals and then subsequent generations to demonstrate adaptation). 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

As has been posted repeatedly in the past, outbreeding is a known negative across many taxa including frogs even within the same species. 

See Sagvik, Jörgen, Tobias Uller, and Mats Olsson. "Outbreeding depression in the common frog, Rana temporaria." Conservation Genetics 6.2 (2005): 205-211.

Ficetola, Gentile Francesco, and Fiorenza De Bernardi. "Supplementation or in situ conservation? Evidence of local adaptation in the Italian agile frog Rana latastei and consequences for the management of populations." Animal Conservation forum. Vol. 8. No. 1. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Uller, Tobias, Joergen Sagvik, and Mats Olsson. "Crosses between frog populations reveal genetic divergence in larval life history at short geographical distance." Biological journal of the Linnean Society 89.1 (2006): 189-195.


some comments 

Ed


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## kblack3 (Mar 9, 2015)

Mic drop


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Broseph (Dec 5, 2011)

Clapping.




.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Ed said:


> See Sagvik, Jörgen, Tobias Uller, and Mats Olsson. "Outbreeding depression in the common frog, Rana temporaria." Conservation Genetics 6.2 (2005): 205-211.





> From a conservation perspective, hybrid vigor may be viewed as good or bad for the California Tiger Salamander, depending on whether one chooses to emphasize fitness of extant populations or genetic purity as a primary conservation goal. - Benjamin M. Fitzpatrick and H. Bradley Shaffer, Hybrid vigor between native and introduced salamanders raises new challenges for conservation


Hybridization isn't going to always produce winners. And it isn't always going to produce losers. 

Today I tried crossing Begonia carolineifolia and Begonia luxurians. I'm guessing/hoping that they are compatible, but they might not be. If they are, there is no guarantee that any of the offspring are going to be better than the parents. But until the technology hurries up and advances enough, the only way to know the outcome is to cross the two species.


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

macg said:


> OP is using a lot of argumentative strategies that I get the feeling I've heard of cult leaders using. Anyone else get that feeling? Is there someone with experience in this that can outline if that is the case?
> 
> I don't mean to digress with this, but the circles being traveled here deserve some meta analysis to reveal what may actually be going on if possible.


This person sounds more like a rep promoting and trying to push a product that people feel they do not need....


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

Ed said:


> Working backwards and I really debated whether any comments in this thread have any value.


Well that sounds a bit harsh to be honest.



Ed said:


> Hardy-Weinberg equation and one of the extinction routes is via hybridization.
> 
> some comments
> 
> Ed


I'm aware of the Hardy-Weinberg equation. I was thinking of a concrete example I read that specifically paired WC frog couples to avoid inbreeding for as long as possible. It just gave a number, if you started with for example 12 frogs, of how many generations you could continue before you had to introduce one or more new WC individuals when pairing animals smartly.


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## Johanovich (Jan 23, 2017)

epiphyte said:


> Biodiversity is my favorite thing. Well, actually economics is my very favorite thing because it can help us maximize biodiversity.
> 
> Imagine if hummingbirds were introduced to Africa. Would they survive? It depends on how adaptable they are. But if they did survive then they would diversify the supply of flowers. All else being equal, an increase in the diversity of the demand will result in an increase in the diversity of the supply.


Biodiversity cannot possibly be your favourite thing if you are suggesting stuff like this.

Introducing hummingbirds into africa? To what end? To get more competition with Africa's native pollinating sunbirds? To help certain introduced flowers establish themselves at the cost of other native ones? Not to mention the potential amount of animal suffering that would befall any unsuccessfull attempts.

The "all else being equal" does not apply to wild ecosystems. It never does. Niches are already filled and introducing something new is bound to push out something else. Aka decreasing biodiversity.

These kind of ideas are what made stuff like cane toads invasive in Australia and have caused massive amounts of extinctions around the globe.


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## Drthsideous (Oct 14, 2019)

I would also like to point out that the reintroduction of horses to the Americas has had terrible ramifications for the local ecosystems. The Spanish brought back over domesticated horses. We don't have wild horses in the Americas, we have feral horses. And they destroy everything. They drive out native wildlife, eat all of the available plant matter, and cause massive soil errosion, just to name a few problems. Introducing non native animals always has unforeseen consequences. It's a lesson ecologists/wildlife biologists have learned repeatedly, yet other people can't figure it out. On another note, I'm all for culling the Mustangs out west. Kill em all.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Johanovich said:


> Well that sounds a bit harsh to be honest.



I've been writing about these things for a really long time and seeing a repeat offender, who does it over and over again, just for kicks... doesn't really encourage me to get involved but as I noted above you all are ignoring the fact that since his claims lack selection pressures other than selection for captivity, all of the arguments for genetic diversity to survive in the wild are valueless. You need those selection pressures before you can breed for the traits, its not like the frogs metamorph with little tattoos saying diversity for drought tolerance or can take higher heat... 





Johanovich said:


> I'm aware of the Hardy-Weinberg equation. I was thinking of a concrete example I read that specifically paired WC frog couples to avoid inbreeding for as long as possible. It just gave a number, if you started with for example 12 frogs, of how many generations you could continue before you had to introduce one or more new WC individuals when pairing animals smartly.



The Hardy-Weinberg equation sets the number of founders based on the length of time and how close you want the captive population to resemble the founder population at the time the founder population was removed from the wild. If I remember correctly, the goal for 250 years and 95% plus representation of the wild population at the time of the captive population foundation was 50 pairs. But to answer your point and examples, the goal of the hobby should be looking to manage genetic diversity for as long as possible but it would require fundamental changes in the hobby before that would ever become feasible and the hobby has repeatedly refused to take that route over decades of time. One of the fundamental actions of the hobby prevents even considering that action as the hobby continually buys froglets for future pairings from the same source resulting in repeated generations of siblings breeding to siblings while repeating the mantra that inbreeding must not be a problem for frogs since no deformities have been reported... which of course ignores the repeated loss of genetic diversity in important gene complexes like the major histocompatability complex. Even in the face of boom and bust cycles where common frogs virtually disappear losing ever larger genetic amounts of diversity when the population rebounds from the few who held onto the frogs, there isn't any interest in the following cycle to manage the genetics. _There is always a lot of lip service but not enough interest or follow through by individuals to make this viable_. You can begin to manage a population with any number of founders (like Przewalski's horse) but without commitment it doesn't matter. 

In addition, people ditch the older frogs for the newer populations and species as they command the highest price and garner the most status and likes. Here's a quote I wrote awhile back after doing some number crunching on the CITES trade database. 



> Here is the commercial use data from the CITES trade database (as a gross report) without the numbers for 2010 yet. From 2004-2007 there actually more than 16,000 pumilio exported from Panama alone for commercial purposes (with more than 22,000 between 2004-2009). In the period of 04-09; 3873 pumilio were exported from the US. If I wasn't tired I could pull up the trade report per reporting country so where the frogs went could at least in part be seen.


Which brings up the point, where are those frogs or their offspring? Some of the populations have pretty much disappeared from the hobby with only a few groups remaining in the hands of a few breeders. 

None of this is new, I've written about it here more than a few times, look at my post count... after that many posts, seeing the same actors up to the same games, wouldn't you start to think it might not be worth it? 

some comments 

Ed


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

Johanovich said:


> Biodiversity cannot possibly be your favourite thing if you are suggesting stuff like this.
> 
> Introducing hummingbirds into africa? To what end? To get more competition with Africa's native pollinating sunbirds?


Increasing the diversity of the demand will increase the diversity of the supply. 



Johanovich said:


> The "all else being equal" does not apply to wild ecosystems. It never does. Niches are already filled and introducing something new is bound to push out something else. Aka decreasing biodiversity.


Think about it. If colonization was a zero sum game, there would be virtually no biodiversity. 



Johanovich said:


> These kind of ideas are what made stuff like cane toads invasive in Australia and have caused massive amounts of extinctions around the globe.


I never said that every introduction would be equally beneficial. As my username indicates, my favorite niche is up in the trees. This niche, which contains numerous micro-niches, isn't usually filled. Therefore, the introduction of epiphytes is more likely to increase rather than decrease biodiversity.

Nature, via the wind, regularly flings dust-like orchid seeds everywhere. She wants Florida to have a much greater variety of epiphytes. And so do I. 

Right now a Cymbidium, maybe dayanum, is just starting to naturalize in Florida. Is it going to push out the native epiphytes? Nope, because there is plenty of room for another epiphyte. All the trees in Florida are definitely not occupied. Virtually all the "arks" are mostly empty. So in this case it really isn't a zero sum game. 

And if somebody has the perception that not enough arks in Florida are carrying Cyrtopodium punctatum, then they should do something about it. They should go around sowing seeds on all the trees.


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## hydrophyte (Jun 5, 2009)

Good Lord...


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## cobe (Oct 10, 2015)

hydrophyte said:


> good lord...


this sums the post up perfectly


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

It was Done - Soundly.

It might be good to walk away. There is no need to be curious, its the same nonsense repeated, it seems the motive is attention, disruption.

we could walk away and let the air plant desiccate from sensory deprivation.


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## DPfarr (Nov 24, 2017)

If each response of his was an ark, you think he might populate it with a different idea? For diversity sake and all...


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## Guest (May 2, 2020)

epiphyte said:


> And if somebody has the perception that not enough arks in Florida are carrying Cyrtopodium punctatum, then they should do something about it. They should go around sowing seeds on all the trees.


The train has departed from unscientific-hypothetical-nonsense station, and is accelerating quickly towards scarytown.


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## ibpigeonmaster (May 2, 2020)

Hey all, brand new user here, not super new to dart frogs though. While I don't really agree with OP here about the unimportance of preserving wild bloodlines 
maybe I'm just dumb here but I've never been able to get a clear answer as the the exact definition of mixing? Obviously if you throw luecs in with tincs you're mixing species, however there are many different morphs of say Dendrobates Auratus. And according to some folks I know irl varying morphs are native to different locales rather than being the result of selective breeding. Is this true? do they exist or is that false? I've had my doubts and my research has kinda just led me here you you guys?


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## Flyschwacker (Apr 23, 2020)

epiphyte said:


> A planet destroying asteroid is heading straight for earth and our only option is to bravely run away. Everybody collaborates in building a bunch of arks. How should dart frogs be distributed among all the arks? Would you suggest putting all the dart frogs in one ark? If not, then why not?


Quick question, if the hypothetical asteroid was truly "planet destroying" why would you bother "bravely" running? 

But if I really think about the question for the whole 13 seconds that I actually did and there really were multiple arks then yes I would put them in a single ark. Why you ask, because space is precious and your talking about repopulating the entire new world. So if we built 5 arks I'd load them up with climate specific plants and animals. Personally I'd take the temperate ship haha, and sail until I found suitable conditions to give my arks inhabitants the best chance at survival. If I never found a temperate zone hey I tried but I already survived the asteroid so we ate all the animals and ended up on a beach with nothing to worry about except repopulating the planet. It's still a win! 

You made one other comment about an animals range, small vs large area of habitation something or another. And while the in captivity part of this debate I won't even dignify with a comment. I certainly would not want hybridized PDF's all over the world. It takes away from the uniqueness of the animal and the specific conditions in witch it lives. It has already evolved to live in the specific whatever 50-100ha that it comes from and that piece of earth is just as important and special as the inhabitants that live there. It's what makes us go ohhh that's amazing or what makes destinations worth visiting and why I think if you put half as much effort into conservation/climate issues as you do into trying to convince us that we should muddy up the waters so to speak we all just might be better off in the long game. Just my .02


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## macg (Apr 19, 2018)

ibpigeonmaster said:


> Hey all, brand new user here, not super new to dart frogs though. While I don't really agree with OP here about the unimportance of preserving wild bloodlines
> 
> maybe I'm just dumb here but I've never been able to get a clear answer as the the exact definition of mixing? Obviously if you throw luecs in with tincs you're mixing species, however there are many different morphs of say Dendrobates Auratus. And according to some folks I know irl varying morphs are native to different locales rather than being the result of selective breeding. Is this true? do they exist or is that false? I've had my doubts and my research has kinda just led me here you you guys?


Morphs are locale based, not selective breeding (except for a very small number of breeders that trademark their selectively bred names. The general consensus on this forum is that selective breeding is detrimental and should not be done.)

It's amazing the amount of natural variety from environmental pressures within a species, isn't it? One of the greatest things about this hobby.


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

Toast.

Done.

Complete.

Fini.


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## epiphyte (Jan 25, 2011)

*#1 Plant Rule*

The #1 Plant Rule: don’t keep all your eggs in one basket

Here are the rest of the plant rules. 

The order of the rules is kinda arbitrary, except for the 1st one. It is definitely by far the most important rule. 

Take this Dermatobotrys saundersii for example... 










It was growing great on my tree, until it wasn't. Fortunately before it died I had sowed some of the seeds from it. 

In the same pic you can see Dischidia cleistantha shingling on the tree. It also kicked the bucket. Same with a second one growing elsewhere on the tree. Fortunately I also had a third one in a different spot on the tree... it is still growing. If I hadn't divided the plant when I got it then chances are good that I would have lost it.

My Aloe africana is really good at hedging its bets...










It flowers over a relatively long period in order to maximize its chances of being cross-pollinated. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to ever end up with that many pods, not sure if it is an issue with pollinators or lack of compatible Aloes. But over the years I've sown the few seeds and shared the seedlings.

Colonization is essentially a way for organisms to hedge their bets by putting their eggs into different geographic baskets. It is hard to imagine life that isn't capable of spreading itself around. If any non-colonizing life has ever existed, it inevitably learned the hard way about the problem with having all its eggs in one basket. 



> For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.
> 
> Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…" - Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot


Yes, I discovered that quote thanks to this short but epic film about space colonization.... 



. 

When we start colonizing space then of course we should hedge our bets...



> Luckily, tens of thousands of pioneers wouldn't have to be housed all in one starship. Spreading people out among multiple ships also spreads out the risk. Modular ships could dock together for trade and social gatherings, but travel separately so that disaster for one wouldn't spell disaster for all, says Smith. When 10,000 people are housed in one starship, there's a potential for a giant catastrophe to wipe out almost everyone onboard. But when 10,000 people are spread out over five ships of 2000 apiece, the damage is limited. - Sarah Fecht, How Many People Does It Take to Colonize Another Star System?


The same is just as true for sea ships...



> When a great company, or even a great merchant, has twenty or thirty ships at sea, they may, as it were, insure one another. The premium saved upon them all, may more than compensate such losses as they are likely to meet with in the common course of chances. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations


In terms of organic "ships"...



> A lion is a vehicle for its genes, constructed by a cooperative of genes as a shared ark to carry them forward to the future, house them and protect them until it is ready to pass them on. - Richard Dawkins, The False Allure of Group Selection


A lion naturally wants to put its genes into as many vehicles as possible. 

In order to maximize the chances that the distant future will have our favorite plants, we should put them in as many baskets as we can.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

*Re: #1 Plant Rule*

I knew this would happen.

It doesn't occur to you, that there are forms of life that have evolved to live on and in tree bark of trees, as They Are. That there are animals with camouflage patterns, behaviors, specialized morphology and mobility features, that depend on its expanses and details to live. Some of which are true obligate in a dependency on tree types in their natural state. 

I guess you think they should "adapt" to your "baskets mission" or die.

Your ideas are rampant and egotistical but luckily your mental state presents clearly so it won't catch on.

No creature should have to be displaced because you maniacally decide to decorate a forests trees.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

*Re: #1 Plant Rule*

For someone involved with living things your disconnect from the natural world is astounding.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

*Re: #1 Plant Rule*



Kmc said:


> Your ideas are rampant and egotistical but luckily your mental state presents clearly so it won't catch on.


I'm busting a gut! That's the funniest thing I've heard all week.


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

*Re: #1 Plant Rule*



Kmc said:


> Your ideas are rampant and egotistical but luckily your mental state presents clearly so it won't catch on.
> 
> No creature should have to be displaced because you maniacally decide to decorate a forests' trees.


This! I literally laughed out loud.


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

Take the hint. This is done for now.

s


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