Clown Opinion

[herpchat]

Travis;

I don't know how many of my wild betta species you got to look at. I keep a modest number and some look very close yet are all different species. In a number of cases aquarists must be conservationists because a number of species are not currently being worked and if not for aquarists they may become extinct.

I will send you a PM and let you into something personal and after you see it you might begin appreciate what I have going on.

 

[dugg]

Isn't a true hybrid sterile? If it's not sterile, then it would be a new species rather than hybrid right? If it is able to breed with another so called hybrid, then it continues the new species, which i believe would be call evolution lol. I kind of understand with what you are doing with the more rare beta species, although IMO, if they aren't in the wild and only in a few jars in someones house, they are effectively extinct already. A. percula and A. ocellaris are roughly as plentiful as flies though lol.

 

[herpchat]

Back in the day of old fashioned species and such there would be some truth the statement but with the definations of today and a lot still comes from Earnst Mayer whom could be argued is the father of determining the definition of what a species is most species that are closely related produce viable offspring capable of reproducing.

The term you are looking for is "Extinct in the Wild" and I do have some species of those. In particularly 3 livebearers and 2 killifish species. I will note here that one of those species was recently reintroduced back into the wild from stocks derived directly from the populations I housed for a number of years.

So yes aquarist do matter!

 

[herpchat]

Here something else to read;

http://www.okcaa.org/articles/monterrey.pdf

I think this sums it up.

 

[Travis L. Stevens]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8225574#post8225574 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by herpchat
Your answer is yes. "Pure breeds are sacred"

Despite all the goal is conservation. That would mean preserving the species in their "pure form"

Hybrids are used for research purposes only and once the research is completed must be destroyed or rendered non breeding. (I often don't exactly follow the protical here but will farm them out as pets provided they are not spawned.) If someone spawns them then they must destroy them or be blacklisted. We have had a few problems with Mahachai and I have been a bit militant in handling them but we have 100% pure Mahachai stocks. See my article Betta in Peril: The Mahachai Situation. http://www.okcaa.org/articles/mahachai.pdf

While I understand why you want exact species for your program and why other people in your program should also use pure breds, but why would hybrid offspring have to be destroyed? There is no way they could be returned to the wild from your average aquarist. And as long as the aquarist isn't using tainted stock for your program, what's the harm? It happens in the wild all the time. After all, you might be able to pinpoint yours down through morphology, but how do you know that it isn't a hybrid. Especially if it was wild caught. A. ocellaris and A. percula are so closely related, it would be very difficult to tell a hybrid from a pure bred. I guess I don't know how they tell hybrids from pure breds, especially in fish, so it seems like the task would be difficult, near impossible, or beyond typical aquarist's means.

For the most part, I'm just speculating out loud.

 

[herpchat]

Like I said, I don't exactly follow it. I have a hard time killing a fish. Before I took college ichthyology I could not kill a fish but one day we went on a collecting trip and my professor said after we got back "OK time to pickle the fish". I freaked. He then told me he had to write the final so I was not allowed to leave the lab until I put the fish in formadehyde. Some were dead so I put those in, that did not bother me but I refused and refused to do it. About 6 hours later I was beginning to rethink things. He explained over and over again why it was nessassary to preserve the fish and record the data. I begged for alternatives. Eventually I pickled the fish and he had won. I virtually cried when I did it. I so hated it but it does kill them quickly.

So personally if you want hybrids fine, keep them away from me, aka Parrott Cichlids. What I produce in research end up being pets.

 

[nlknight]

Clown Opinion

I dont want to purchase or produce anything hybrid either. And I dont understand why others would . BUT to each his own I suppose.

 

[herpchat]

I did not answer your question.

I can look at external morphology and have a good idea. We can then take the specimens and do line breeding and see what they produce. We can also make cladiograms based upon DNA to determine if they are species or not.

Around the industrial areas of Bangkok I had some fish caught for me to ID, the catcher said "These are a new wild species, ID them please and give me name". Due to my extensive knowledge of the splendens complex I knew they were hybrids and I then happened to be with Dr. Robert Goldstein at the time and after I made my determination I passed the fish to him and he totally concured with my opinion. Each species tends to have distinct characteristics. Tis why when someone tells me it looks right based upon a gut instinct I don't discount it. I had a similar experience leading a Herp Expedition in SouthWest Oklahoma forrest. A student had caught a toad and asked me for an ID and I said Bufo americanus. A Herp professor who was on the tour I was leading wanted to argue and basically said how the hell can you say it was Bufo americanus, and I told him by how it looks. The toad was red and green (something American Toads are not). We then had to sit for 30 minutes while he keyed out and measured the Boss' on the toad then after all that he said Bufo americanus then wanted to know how I knew and I told him it felt right, that and the toad he thought it was would have been in the wrong habitat type even though they did occur in the area.

 

[pwhitby]

Gerald, im curious, who does the DNA analysis and cladograms you mentioned?

 

[herpchat]

Typically it is the University of Singapore that does it. Usually under the supervision of Dr. Tan Hui Hoek.

 

[pwhitby]

On clown fish, or just the native species of that area?

 

[Travis L. Stevens]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8226053#post8226053 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by herpchat
Like I said, I don't exactly follow it. I have a hard time killing a fish. Before I took college ichthyology I could not kill a fish but one day we went on a collecting trip and my professor said after we got back "OK time to pickle the fish". I freaked. He then told me he had to write the final so I was not allowed to leave the lab until I put the fish in formadehyde. Some were dead so I put those in, that did not bother me but I refused and refused to do it. About 6 hours later I was beginning to rethink things. He explained over and over again why it was nessassary to preserve the fish and record the data. I begged for alternatives. Eventually I pickled the fish and he had won. I virtually cried when I did it. I so hated it but it does kill them quickly.

That's a little different though. They are being preserved for future research and not just being flushed down the drain.

So personally if you want hybrids fine, keep them away from me, aka Parrott Cichlids. What I produce in research end up being pets.

I guess I walk a thin line. I have no problem with "natural" hybrids. Such as Striped Bass x White Bass in our Oklahoma tributaries. They breed without us forcing them to. But Blood Parrots were forcefully crossbred for the pet industry. That I frown upon. But, then there are some "unnatural" crossbreeds that I see with a potential source of scientific information. Why do clownfish so readily hybridize? To find out, you would have to see it in action. That's how I take a thread like this: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=609538 This person obviously isn't trying to make a killing of money off of it but rather as research as a whole and personal experience in raising the fry.

 

[herpchat]

If the fish are sold as hybrids and people know that is one thing, when you try to pass things off as a species that is where I draw the line. The first commericial mahachai that came in were not full mahachai, most people can not tell the difference between a female mahachai or a female imbellis or smaragdina so a lot of them got crossbred and when they did the line breeding they tossed a lot of crap. I had some that came from a friend that personally caught them and sent them to us, they bred true for 6 generations each generation looking like the previous generation. Our program was the only one that had success like that.

Fish cross for a number of reasons, improper sex balance (I found this with native killifish aka Fundulus notatus, and Fundulus olivacious) for one, however species have reproductive stratigies that isolate them from other species hence they are species.

Do I need to cover what makes a species a species?

 

[herpchat]

Actually Dr Tan and Dr Ng do all sorts of research on all things not just fish. I recently read an article on the trilobite beetle, the male morphs into a beetle while the female stays a larvae her entire life and gets dozens of times bigger then the male.

However their primary research is on anabantoids and catfish if I remember.

 

[dugg]

Thanks for that last link Travis. I just finished all 24 pages. That was some cool stuff. I just wish i had seen that when i could have gotten a pair.

 

[herpchat]

Why can you not get a pair now?

 

[captbunzo]

I think it is important to recognize that these species are in no danger of extinction, etc. For that means, I can't comprehend why there would be something wrong with hybridizing. Now, I could imagine it not being a particular preference of yours.

I think there might even by certain interesting research aspects of hybridizing certain critters...

 

[dugg]

Can't get a pair because he got tierd of messing with all of it and stopped raising the fry. All of the ones he had are sold.

 

[herpchat]

If you wish to you may do so. Yes those clowns are not in danger and there is a lot to be learned especially since there are not a real definitive answer as to what exactly I have . I am going to treat the new ones like perculas and find another occie and move the occies to a new tank. I will probably strip down one of the 20s on my display rack to make a new SW tank, probably the krataios tank. I have given many thoughts to converting that entire display rack to SW at one time or half of it. But I had always wanted a bumblebee goby tank and now I have it.

 

[dugg]

I didn't mean to turn this into a big discussion on hybridizing or anything. I was just wondering why anyone would worry about cross breading two fish that are so closely related that they are determined by one more dorsel fin then the next lol. I didn't realize that you actually had a purpose in breeding them, other then to try and raise fry for fun.

Although i'm more of a natural selection kind of guy ( mother nature has done fine so far). I do admire the work you have done preserving species, especially if you are re introducing them to the wild at some point. Not to mention the monumental gains that i'm sure have been made in husbandy, and a ton of diseases and such due to this kind of work.