Cross Genetics!

[Tommy3492]

Hey guys,

Quick question... if i were too breed two snowflake clowns would the babies be snowflake as well, or is it just a mutation batch from a true percula and a flase percula. My thought on this is yes... i would.. but there would be alot less snowflake clown babies rather if i were to breed just two false perculas.. as well the snowflake batch would not be as strong.

Any thoughts would help... me and my co workers are still arguing about this.

Thanks

 

[Tommy3492]

bumpsizzile

 

[SkullV]

There is nothing Percula about a snowflake. They are 100% Ocellaris. If you breed 2 snowflakes you will get some snowflakes and some regular barred.

 

[bues0022]

I also want to reinforce, misbarring, abnormal bars, or hyperpigmentation are not genetic defects or mutations.

Also, false percula is a terribly confusing term. Ocellaris is much preferred.

 

[phender]

I also want to reinforce, misbarring, abnormal bars, or hyperpigmentation are not genetic defects or mutations.

Not sure what you mean by this.

Hyperpigmentation (picasso, snowflake, etc.) certainly has a genetic component, probably several. The fish have been selectively bred for those genetic traits. The original trait was probably some sort of mutation of a gene, since it is not the "normal" appearance of that fish. These mutations (mutations are not always bad) were not caused by the inbreeding/selective breeding however. They were natural mutations that were found in wild fish and then selectively bred for.
FWIW, the original snowflakes were produced by 2 normal appearing wild caught fish who just happened to occasionally throw a snowflake.
In the case of mis-barrs (incomplete stripes), this can and usually is caused by environmental factors during the developmental stages of the growth of the fry.

 

[Tommy3492]

im not talking about misbars.. i think SkullV anwsered my question. If i were too breed two snowflake clowns would the resulting babies be snowflake as well? As well if i were to breed two Platnium clowns would the resulting babies be platniums.

SkullV states that some would be and some would be normal ocellaris clowns... On this note if i bred two snowflake clowns would the resulting larvae batch not be as large and or as healthy, compared to breeding two occelaris clowns?

Thanks guys

 

[jbax]

the babies will be mixed. but breeding 2 snowflakes may raise the chance of the batch having more snowflakes in it. my s'mores are going to have very diverse offspring. will some be

1)black/white
2)orange/white
3)orange/white snowflake
4)black/white snowflake
5) mixed/white
6) mixed/white snowflake (s'more)

 

[Clown King]

Can you post pics of your breeding s'mores?

 

[jbax]

Can you post pics of your breeding s'mores?

they haven't spawned yet. but it's only a matter of time.

 

[jeff@zina.com]

In general, none of the current color variations in clown fish breed true. Some are better than others and sometimes it's luck of the draw. Some pairs will throw a higher percentage of parental matches than others.

Also, in general, variations are harder to raise than standard colored clowns. More "delicate" is the term I'd use, though it's not really scientific. If you're reasonably successful with standard colors then you won't have a major issue with any variations.

Jeff

 

[jumpman420]

Crazy all the different ones all from the same breed but different

 

[fingerwrinkles]

Tommy, if it helps to explain to your co-workers in this manner, you can tell them that just because a particular ocellaris has more white in it than another ocellaris, that does not mean that all the babies of that "whiter" ocellaris will also have more white. Typically there will be a few in the batch that look similar to the parent, some that have more white, and probably a very large majority that will have less. jbax does a nice job of summarizing the various types of colorations that will come out from his pair based upon the historical parentage of his pair, but from batch to batch you never know what you might get. In my batches of various ocellaris and true percula spawns (same species, wild caught pairs only) I see a fair degree of variation in coloration from batch to batch in a few of the babies (the genetic outliers, if you will), but most of them will be similar in coloration and intensity. As phender notes, these traits are likely based in a variety of genes, and through selective pairing in captivity over a number of generations these former "genetic outliers" become the primary trait in every hatch.

Hope this helps, and if you really want to toy around with your mates you can tell them that it is quite possible that a "normal" appearing percula juvenile can actually produce with another "normal" appearing percula a few picasso juveniles if one of the "normal" parents happens to be the offspring of a picasso parent. The number of picasso babies would likely increase as well if both the "normal" percula parents came from a picasso parent since they both might contribute the trait to the nest, but in a higher percentage than a single parent alone.

 

[Tommy3492]

Awesome! thanks for your guys help.

Another question i have is... When i got my two occelaris clowns from my LFS, they came in on the same exact batch together.. Mind you this was about 8 months ago. They were very tiny jevunilles when they came in, so i put them in one of our display tanks so i can raise them and in the future buy them. So i did all of this, but now i am wondering could they be sterile? Because they were in the same bag from the same distributor, as well i believe it was from a aquaculture company such as ORA or SA. And in the future when i buy more clowns to breed them, should i go to two different fish stores to ensure they are not of the same batch.

We recently got a batch of black and white occellaris from Sustainable Aquatics. I did the same thing when they came in, I grabed two of them from the bag and put them in a display aquarium so i can buy them in a month or so.

 

[Tommy3492]

sterile

sterile

Awesome! thanks for your guys help.

Another question i have is... When i got my two occelaris clowns from my LFS, they came in on the same exact batch together.. Mind you this was about 8 months ago. They were very tiny jevunilles when they came in, so i put them in one of our display tanks so i can raise them and in the future buy them. So i did all of this, but now i am wondering could they be sterile? Because they were in the same bag from the same distributor, as well i believe it was from a aquaculture company such as ORA or SA. And in the future when i buy more clowns to breed them, should i go to two different fish stores to ensure they are not of the same batch.

We recently got a batch of black and white occellaris from Sustainable Aquatics. I did the same thing when they came in, I grabed two of them from the bag and put them in a display aquarium so i can buy them in a month or so. Are these guys sterile?

 

[phender]

I don't understand what sterility has to do with being from the same batch of clowns. Sibling clowns are perfectly capable of producing babies with each other.

 

[Fishboy42]

We recently got a batch of black and white occellaris from Sustainable Aquatics. I did the same thing when they came in, I grabed two of them from the bag and put them in a display aquarium so i can buy them in a month or so. Are these guys sterile?

No worries, they should breed just fine. If you are concerned about inbreeding and want to source some unrelated fish, your LFS can request that fish be selected for shipping from different genetic lines and marked accordingly in the package (can even put their hatch dates on the bag if that's info you'd like).

Matt

 

[chrisv]

the babies will be mixed. but breeding 2 snowflakes may raise the chance of the batch having more snowflakes in it. my s'mores are going to have very diverse offspring. will some be

1)black/white
2)orange/white
3)orange/white snowflake
4)black/white snowflake
5) mixed/white
6) mixed/white snowflake (s'more)

Jbax, is this what you THINK may happen or have you seen this actually happen in other people's hands?

I would love to see pictures of anyones clowns that produced this diversity of offspring.

 

[bues0022]

Not sure what you mean by this.

Hyperpigmentation (picasso, snowflake, etc.) certainly has a genetic component, probably several. The fish have been selectively bred for those genetic traits. The original trait was probably some sort of mutation of a gene, since it is not the "normal" appearance of that fish. These mutations (mutations are not always bad) were not caused by the inbreeding/selective breeding however. They were natural mutations that were found in wild fish and then selectively bred for.
FWIW, the original snowflakes were produced by 2 normal appearing wild caught fish who just happened to occasionally throw a snowflake.
In the case of mis-barrs (incomplete stripes), this can and usually is caused by environmental factors during the developmental stages of the growth of the fry.

I know this is a bit old but I wanted to clarify further what I had attempted to state previously. I will agree with you that at one point in time the genetics of the clownfish may have become mutated to allow for hyper (or hypo) pigmentation to occur. However, many downers attempt to discredit the different patterning of picassos, nakeds, midnights, snoflakes etc to currently mutated fish. To this point I will argue this is not the case. The genetic code exists within the clownfish population discussed here to have different variations of patterning - just the same that offspring from two brown-haired humans may have a red-head. Is this latter example a mutation? No, merely a rare presence of a recessive trait being exhibited. You make the point beautifully describing how "snowflakes" came to be realized by the hobby. (I say 'realized' because we didn't create them, the potential already existed in the genetic code of the clownfish - and since that time wild-caught specimens have been found. I guarantee that any designer clown we can think of has already existed in nature - we just may not have found the needle in the hay stack yet.)

I'm not convinced that the mis-barring due to water conditions seen in some captive bred fish is an actual genetic mutation, or rather an environmental limitation placed on the genetic code like how a pine tree at high altitude has its growth stunted due to resource limitations. The genetic code remains the same, but the environment doesn't allow for the code to "live up" to it's full potential. To this point - you could have a pair of genetically real mis-barred ocellaris, and a pair of water quality induced mis-bars. The former would produce a much higher percentage of misbars than the later (if both raised in ideal conditions) because their genetics dictate the barring. Back to my earlier example of the red-head. The red-head could be real because of both parents having this trait somewhere along the family tree, or the child could just be dying their hair.

In any case, it seems like we mostly agree to a large extent, but I just wanted to reiterate that when some speak of a picasso being a "mutated" fish, it really is not. It originated some time ago (perhaps thousands/millions of years for all we know, much the same how different species developed), and geneticists and evolutionary biologists would consider the current development of the designer-type barring as genetic drift where there is a change in the frequency of a particular allele. The only difference here is that instead of natural population selection, humans are picking and choosing thereby resulting in higher percentage/purity if-you-will of the selected traits.

Snowflakes=mutated fish.....no.

 

[chrisv]

Dev Dyn. 2003 Apr;226(4):627-33.

Origin of directionality in the fish stripe pattern.

Shoji H, Mochizuki A, Iwasa Y, Hirata M, Watanabe T, Hioki S, Kondo S.
Source
Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.

Abstract

The formation of stripe patterns in animal skin has been explained by the reaction-diffusion (RD) system, a hypothetical chemical reaction proposed by A. Turing. Although animal stripes usually have directionality, the RD model alone cannot explain how the direction is specified. To investigate the mechanism regulating the direction of stripes, we studied stripe pattern formation in two species of Genicanthus during sexual conversion. These species share almost identical morphologic properties, except for their stripe direction. In both species, spots transiently arise at random positions and then combine and rearrange to form directional stripes. Computational analysis has shown that diffusion anisotropy is very effective at specifying the direction of stripes formed by the RD system. Model simulations reproduce the transient dynamics of directional pattern formation observed in fish as well as the resulting stripes. In cases where the magnitude and direction of diffusion anisotropy of the substances are identical, the resulting stripes are not directional. However, if they differ, stripes become directional. As only a small difference in anisotropy is required for this effect, any kind of structure with directional conformation might cause a marked change in stripe direction. Scales are the most likely candidate structure for generating anisotropic interactions in skin.

 

[chrisv]

Im guessing that loss of anisotropy in clownfish pattern is the result of a genetic deficiency in a morphogen that controls orange/white boundaries in early development. This deficiency would either come in the form of a genetic lesion (mutation) or in the form of an environmental factor that causes the defect. Since the Picasso pattern is heritable, it stands to reason that it is that it is the result of a genetic lesion, not an environmental factor. For the same reason that the fish would have evolved the striped pattern to begin with (selective evolutionary pressure) the Picasso pattern would be at a selective disadvantage and thus the mutation that facilitates the Picasso phenotype would be a rare variant in wild populations. Yes, it is "natural". Yes it is a mutant. Just like any other rare recessive phenotype is the result of a mutant allele.

There are likely complicated combinatoric mutations/ co-dominance relationships that give rise to these phenotypes.

The idea that smores clownfish will give rise to al of those phenotypic classes is probably 95% not true. I would love to hear about someone who has done it.

Clown fish patterning does not follow the laws of simple Mendelian genetics! That i PROMISE you.