FMarini !! - question for you - you need to help settle an arugment on 'inbreeding'

[Clyde]

i get a brood of 16

all pair up (8 males 8 females)

they breed - so on so on so on

will i get a one eyed Bangaii Fry ? three eyes 4 anal fins and double topfin ?

or is there no such thing as 'inbreeding' in this area ?

anyway - any info on this area would be appericated :)



btw: mother in law in San diego sent me a newspaper clipping about Banggai Breeding - etc your name was mentioned it it, interesting reading.

Didnt find it in the local papers here in Minnesota.

glad she kept an eye out and clipped it out for me.


anyway look forward for your response.

[Wolverine]

Well, I know I'm not the person you're looking for answers from, but I've seen some of the effects of this. At our zoo's aquarium there are several sets of breeding bangaii that have been there for a few years now, and then the children have been pairing up like that to the point that there are several generations of inbred fish in the tank.

The biggest problems they've seen there are in the jaws and gill covers. Several of the inbred fish have had malformed jaws; for example, for some the lower jaw is not long enough to completely close the mouth. In a few of the other fish the jaws simply won't line up right. For the gill covers there are a few fish that looked like someone grabbed a cover on one or both sides and just yanked them forward, completely exposing the gills.

The in-breeding problem is definitely something that has people worried for the long-term success of these fish. We're hoping to get some of the fry out of our tank before they pair up and start having kids of their own.

Now we can wait for the experts to chime in.

Dave

[FMarini]

Hi:
great question, and one we've (the collective of banggai breeders) have dwelled over.....i don't think we've come up w/ good answers either way. I can say two things. Besides the reports from wolverine, I have not read anything nor seen anything suggesting that inbreeding has/or will occur in these fish.
W/ that said I would expect two things. 1) as wolverine mentioned there is a good likelihood of inbreeding, and that malformities will occur. Fish breeders who breed freshwater tropical fish experience this quite often, and use culling to rid the deformed animals. So on one hand gentic problems are a huge possiblity.
2) based on the data from african killifish, one could imagine that fish w/ very small populations, and some abiliy to accept genetic drift could result in little genetic consequence. Meaning that killifish often spend there whole lives in a mudhole, and they interbreed all the time (including back breeding w/ their parents), and these fish have somehow been able to overcome severe inbreeding and genetic problems. So if we apply this concept to banggais...they are a relatively small population of fish, extremely localized, maybe they are inbreeding in the wild, w/ little genetic consequence.

So whatever the mechanisms maybe (like fantastic DNA repair or proofreading capacity) there are fish which are capable of staying relatively genetically tight.

So which are banggais?? I don't know. I have never experienced the problem wolverine mentioned but i will send this thread to a few friends who also breed lots (like K Clarke, and rod Buehler) and see what other experiences have been. Again we have discussed this before, and i'll go back and search to see whats available.
As to what to do next? Right now i am of the opinion that we should prevent inbreeding (while the wild-caught stock is available), and should banggais no longer be imported, find ways of swapping fry to prevent these occurance from happening.
Great question....these are my thoughts on the matter
I'm open to read others
frank

[Briarhill]

Well I know practically know nothing on genetics and fish with
only 1 batch of banggai fry to my credit. I do know a good deal
of genetics in dogs, esp. since I've done some in-breeding with
them.
From what I've read supposedly after breeding 2 dogs;
take a female
and breed back to her sire; take a female from that and breed back
the the same sire and do this for enough generations (6-7) or
more then you'd get basically "clones". Granted alot of culling
would be required!
My experience has been you'll see the best and the worst of the
genes come out when doing this. It's the fastest way to develope
a strain of your own. It does the same as line-breeding, but faster. YOU MUST CULL and that's plain and simple.
I would say I'd go with Frank's suggestion of being already
in-bred in the wild, so probably not too many defective genes left.
Since nature deals with the culling. But in our tanks we are
the ones that need to do the culling. I'll have to find out how
many genes a fish has, but even with less genes than dogs the fry would have thousands of ways the genes could be arranged.
SO really even though they are from the same hatch...very few
would have like pairings of genes. Think of it as twins verses
identical twins.
I maybe full of crap about fish genetics, but these would
be my thoughts. LOL :D

[Clyde]

thanks for good feedback

thanks frank - now I just say 'well FMarini says so, so fooyoo'

lol

but culling idea would be right - theres like 10 pairs in a given area - and stuff sot heres less chance of one eyed cyclopes etc

we ll see how it goes.

thanks again..