# Bastimentos Island and the pumilio



## Guest (Jan 14, 2005)

This is for the people that have been on Bastimentos Island and have walked around. It is commonly known that the pumilio there come in a wide array of colors. Red, Orange, Yellow, Cream, Bronze, Green.

I was wondering if the colors are mixed all over the island, or there are pockets of single colored frogs. I have seen the picture of the multiple morphs on 1 tree and want to know if this just occurs in places. Before I thought the island was mixed through out. But more recently I have heard rumors that their is one population of red. And I have even heard that a well respected breeder said the island is red on one side, orange the other, and mixed in the middle. The new book has a section in it that says 96% of the pumilio that live near the beach are reddish orange with a 4% variance, while deep in the forest 84% are red-orange. With that being said I know that a pair of yellow basti's will produce a variety of offspring, cream, bronze, orange, and yellow. While the red and orange basti's produce offspring the color of the parents. Any thoughts?


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## AlexanderStubbs (Feb 18, 2004)

The pumilio around Red Frog Beach are highly variable, however there are populations on Bastimentos that contain only one morph of frog. There is a solid red morph in the center of the island. Around the village of Salt Creek and the Southern tip of the island you can find green and orange pumilio. Some people call them San Cristobal. Here is a link to a picture I took this summer: [/img]http://www.frognet.org/gallery/album55/bastigo

The entire population looks like this, there are no other frogs mixed in.

Alexander


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## dmartin72 (Oct 27, 2004)

http://www.frognet.org/albums/album55/bastigo.jpg


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## Guest (Jan 14, 2005)

I just want to post this map to help people follow along:
http://www.fiu.edu/~collinsl/bastimentos.gif

Alexander how much of the island did you cover?
So you saw three different single colored morphs? And maybe I am not reading it right, but people are calling the orange and green pumilio San Cristobal?

edit: changed from pic to link... pic was to large


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

Wow, I never realized how small the island was. It's amazing what kind of bidiversity can be seen in such a small space, even among one morph of Pumilio.


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2005)

Anyone else?


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2005)

I took that shot of the handful from the one tree. The only place I have seen different morphs together is near the town. The beach has all pretty much one type, and the other few spots I went were the same. It wasn't until the outskirts of the town up the small hill where I found all the variety of color forms. 
j


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2005)

What I am really trying to get at is if you think red Basti should breed only with reds, orange to orange, yellow to yellow, but with the mass variability of the yellow's off spring were do you start? GPS coordinates of collection data would be very nice, but to late. I am all for keeping these frogs as close to "Wild" as possible. I would hate to see line breeding (which is being done) just because the frogs look the same. 

I have seen a lot of people looking for "small spot basti" because they have one with small spots. If the yellow's are always found with red or orange morph, then I have no problem breeding yellow to orange, but if red are mainly found with just red we should keep them close to than. I want the hobby to keep these frogs as variable as they are in the wild. 
Breeding a yellow to yellow should produce more yellow froglets than yellow to orange, but if everyone does this then I see a problem. Another problem is the greed factor... because a yellow basti sells for more that the orange. 

I guess I would like guide to the island, labeling where each color variant can be found. If any one wants to donate more to me for this I would be happy to do it this summer/fall


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## RSines (Feb 15, 2004)

Ben,

I wonder how picky the frogs are based on looks in the wild as compared to captivity. There is certainly more to frog breeding behavior other than just the male’s call... right? It would seem in captivity that we easily can force frogs to breed simply by presenting them with little option. Tincs can easily cross color morphs and we know they can breed with other species in captivity (auratus). But, has anyone tried to breeding a red pumilio with a yellow? Would anyone be surprised if this didn't work? I am interested in knowing how picky pumilio are visually with selecting a mate. Could multiple color morphs coexist within the same area, eventually leading to new species or reclassification as evolution continues? 

-Richard


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2005)

Kyle Summers has written a few papers on visual selection. He has a few papers on his site, but I have one that shows the off spring of man-made crossed morph (been trying to find my copy all week, lol). Some look very close to what some pumilo in the wild look like. I believe they prefer like colored frogs, but in the wild a few differnt colors would most like breed if in the same location. I have seen a picture of a yellow with an orange basti (won't say where), but not sure if that pair reproduced. I want to say I heard they did, but can remember. 



tuthelimit said:


> Could multiple color morphs coexist within the same area, eventually leading to new species or reclassification as evolution continues? -Richard


This is what evolution is all about, but with how similar they are right now some mixing has to be going on. Maybe I am wrong on this however.


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2005)

I've also proposed a project, that I actually think will get done next year now, using different forms of Bastimentos D. pumilio from the same population. It's exactly what you guys have been describing, a visual mate selection, I even wrote it up and had it on the board several months ago. It's interesting stuff, and hopefully we'll be working on that shortly.
j


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

Yeager said:


> I've also proposed a project, that I actually think will get done next year now, using different forms of Bastimentos D. pumilio from the same population. It's exactly what you guys have been describing, a visual mate selection, I even wrote it up and had it on the board several months ago. It's interesting stuff, and hopefully we'll be working on that shortly.
> j


In the mean time, it sounds like we are screwed on knowing how to set up breeding groups if all we know is that they came from "Basitmentos". It sounds like there are several distinct populations that have settled into a single morph and only one or a few populations that are variable enough to show the whole range. But being only a few km apart, it would be quite a stretch to say that these distinct populations are genetically isolated from the others over evolutionary time scales. But it does leave us with a mess so far as trying to figure out which frogs belong to which is concerned. But trying to divy up frogs based on how fine the spot patterns are seems to be going too far into the invent-a-morph corner.


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## Guest (Jan 17, 2005)

From what I saw, the larger, rounder spots are from near the town. When you talk about smaller pepper sized spots, they were the ones near Red Frog Beach. I would keep similar ones paired, but not worry about stuff like white on the legs etc. 
j


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## Guest (Jan 17, 2005)

Interesting... thank for the info.


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## RSines (Feb 15, 2004)

Now, if a fine spot breeds with a large spot what can we expect? Would you expect the small spots to be a receive trait or co-dominate or even incomplete dominate? Maybe it isn’t so simple at all. This is a very cool topic of interest. 

-Richard


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## Randy (Mar 18, 2004)

Since it seems that there are populations which have a propensity for a certain coloration, I believe that the hobby needs to represent these populations distictly as well. Justin, are you going to experiment with wild-caught or captive-born pumilio? Also, which morphs will you be working with? That's going to be an incredible experiment, I can't wait to see the results!


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## Guest (Jan 17, 2005)

The WC versus CB is something I have to talk to my advisor about. I would prefer CB, but that is very costly, and who knows for sure if the behavior is the same as the wild... We shall see. I'm sure everyone will enjoy the results when they're published.
j


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

Randy said:


> Since it seems that there are populations which have a propensity for a certain coloration, I believe that the hobby needs to represent these populations distictly as well.


I believe that distinct wild populations should always be represented as distinct populations in captivity. And I am going to reluctantly agree with keeping the pumilio morphs apart now. This is too bad because we have at least one variable population that should be kept variable. Breeding yellow to yellow, orange to orange, and so on with frogs from this variable population is going to lead to loss of genetic diversity over time but it sounds like there is no way to know which population a bastimentos frog came from. Bummer.


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## steelcube (Mar 17, 2004)

bbrock said:


> Breeding yellow to yellow, orange to orange, and so on with frogs from this variable population is going to lead to loss of genetic diversity over time...


Brent,

This is assuming someone is inbreeding the same line over time... yes you will lose genetic diversity * if * they came from an inbred line... However there are ways that you do not have to inbreed frogs.

One could maintain frogs close to the wild type AND have genetic representations of wild morphs at the same time. 

This is * not * creating designer frogs. 

I guess that's what I have been trying to say for a while... enough for now.


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

steelcube said:


> bbrock said:
> 
> 
> > Breeding yellow to yellow, orange to orange, and so on with frogs from this variable population is going to lead to loss of genetic diversity over time...
> ...


I don't really agree with this but I think I see why we are both right but still disagree. If you take a continuously variable genetic population and subdivide it into discrete populations for breeding, you may be preserving all of the alleles present in the wild population but you are almost certainly going to alter the frequency of allelic combinations. If we take frogs that come from a population with continuous variation from bright red to yellow and group them into red, orange, and yellow, then we have to arbitrarily place the in between frogs into one of the 3 groups. Over time each of the 3 groups is likely to become blended to express genes at similar frequencies within the group so it is possible we could loose frogs that represent these intermediate forms in the wild.

This is most certainly designer breeding because we are artificially dividing up a single genetic wild population into groups according to how we think they should look. We are creating 3 populations out of one. Yes, we are preserving the wild alleles but not the characteristics of the wild population. And yes, the individual frogs will still represent wild type animals but the population as a whole will not. The difference between our views is that I'm looking at population level gene expression rather than individual gene expression. If we ever want to be seriously included in conservation breeding programs, then we need to move to population level genetics in our breeding programs.

I have other opinions about the Basti population but they are even more complicated and contentious than I've already presented so I'll just leave it that the point is moot since we don't know whether the frogs we have came from a single morph, or multi-morph population within the island.


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## steelcube (Mar 17, 2004)

> If you take a continuously variable genetic population and subdivide it into discrete populations for breeding, you may be preserving all of the alleles present in the wild population but you are almost certainly going to alter the frequency of allelic combinations. If we take frogs that come from a population with continuous variation from bright red to yellow and group them into red, orange, and yellow, then we have to arbitrarily place the in between frogs into one of the 3 groups. Over time each of the 3 groups is likely to become blended to express genes at similar frequencies within the group so it is possible we could loose frogs that represent these intermediate forms in the wild.


In electrical term, this is like the argument between analog vs. digital... which is better etc... 

Yes, what you're saying is indeed better, in an ideal wild population way... which you're the expert... and I can see how you look at it this way. In the wild, you will indeed get a continuous (or "analog") color spectrums or color representations (light - dark blue azureus is an example) and it will represent a continuous flow of gene and colorations.

To me, since we took from the wild, "samples" of this continuous color spectrums or color representations... we would never get a complete analog spectrum... (well either that or I am a perfectionist) and we are now dealing with "digital" samples in the hobby... The genes "in between" will not be acurate and never be truly represented in the hobby...

Also, in your term, the abnormal (deformed) but breedable frogs should not be culled but mixed in the genes... like their wild counterpart... if someone is culling abnormal frogs, he/she is altering the frequency of allelic combinations. 

Not so with the digital term, if we do not want the abnormal frogs, we cull them and therefore the genetic trait is removed from the gene pool..



> This is most certainly designer breeding because we are artificially dividing up a single genetic wild population into groups according to how we think they should look. We are creating 3 populations out of one. Yes, we are preserving the wild alleles but not the characteristics of the wild population.


To me, creating designer frogs would be creating something that is not avaliable in their wild color spectrums.... When people mixing different type of albinos to create something like "high orange" albinos then that is creating designer frogs... 

However breeding albino, which occurs naturally in the wild is not creating designers as long as they are not inbreed... to maintain their variability.

Well, basically I took what you believe one step further, but I do not believe that it's creating designer frogs.... yet.... 

Ok, enough from me...


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

steelcube said:


> In electrical term, this is like the argument between analog vs. digital... which is better etc...
> 
> Yes, what you're saying is indeed better, in an ideal wild population way... which you're the expert... and I can see how you look at it this way. In the wild, you will indeed get a continuous (or "analog") color spectrums or color representations (light - dark blue azureus is an example) and it will represent a continuous flow of gene and colorations.


Nice analogy! I wish I would have thought of that.



> To me, since we took from the wild, "samples" of this continuous color spectrums or color representations... we would never get a complete analog spectrum... (well either that or I am a perfectionist) and we are now dealing with "digital" samples in the hobby... The genes "in between" will not be acurate and never be truly represented in the hobby...


I'll go with the perfectionist part ;-) If our sample size from the wild is large enough, we should be able to approximate the variability of the wild population. There is some formal theory and rules of thumb in conservation science to guide the size of the founder population needed but I don't know what these are off the top of my head.



> Also, in your term, the abnormal (deformed) but breedable frogs should not be culled but mixed in the genes... like their wild counterpart... if someone is culling abnormal frogs, he/she is altering the frequency of allelic combinations.
> 
> Not so with the digital term, if we do not want the abnormal frogs, we cull them and therefore the genetic trait is removed from the gene pool..


Well this gets into a whole other aspect of husbandry with no firm answers. Obviously selective pressures in the wild influence gene frequency and serve as "natural culling". We can't know exactly what the selective pressures are and whether an individual in the wild survives is a function of probability and chance so we can't exactly imitate natural selection. But we should make common sense decisions and cull animals that would have a low chance of survival in the wild. This is especially important in small captive populations where the presence of a deleterious allele can quickly spread to a significant proportion of the population. In other words, 1 bum frog out of 20,000 is going to have less influence on the genetics of the population than 1 bum frog out of 200.

So regardless of whether we are looking at digital or analog, I don't think we can hide from the responsiblity of culling.




> To me, creating designer frogs would be creating something that is not avaliable in their wild color spectrums.... When people mixing different type of albinos to create something like "high orange" albinos then that is creating designer frogs...
> 
> However breeding albino, which occurs naturally in the wild is not creating designers as long as they are not inbreed... to maintain their variability.
> 
> Well, basically I took what you believe one step further, but I do not believe that it's creating designer frogs.... yet....


I can agree with this. It isn't creating designer frogs but possibly designer populations. The one caveat about the albinos though is the rare allele showing up in a small population as described above. We may have to do some artificial manipulation to keep the albino genes at a frequency that approximates that found in the wild... if we want to keep the population something like the wild. This would mean something short of culling but more than randomly breeding the albino animals as if they were just another frog.

Just to interject a little personal opinion about albinos. I believe the value of albinos is in their rarity rather than their appearance. I've called this the "white buffalo effect" in other forums. I believe that albinos are pretty neat but only because they are rare. If they are bred like so many other albino animals, the value is lost.

Thanks for bringing clarity to this thread.


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