# Breeding sac mates.



## salmonpink (Aug 23, 2012)

I recently ended up with a 5" male and female ornata that I just recently found out they r sac mates. What's that mean towards breeding. I have been researching a lot on breeding sac mates but not getting clear answers.


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## captmarga (Aug 23, 2012)

I keep hearing that it's not a problem... but are they both the same size?   Usually with sac mates the males mature faster and thus can't mate with the females...

I had three P formosas that were sacmate in a communal setup.  Both males have matured and are gone.  The third was the smallest of the lot is still going strong, and appears to be the female.  She's outlived both her brothers. (And molted out since they died, so no eggsacs...) 

Marga


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## salmonpink (Aug 23, 2012)

The r both about 5 inches. The female little bigger. Also being sac mates can the be in the same enclosure?


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## captmarga (Aug 23, 2012)

I think many breeders co-hab the pokies at breeding time.  They will co-hab, mate, co-hab... then eventually she might eat the male.  But that is a risk every time, isn't it?   I tried co-habbing my irminia, it lasted for about two weeks, then she ate him overnight.  Got a nice sac, but lost a good male.  

I know a breeder that has a pair of pokies that have been co-habbing for a couple of months.  

Marga


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## salmonpink (Aug 23, 2012)

Yeah. I for sure wanna breed them but sure I will lose my male. I don't want to but i wanna sac lol


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## grayzone (Aug 23, 2012)

Breeding , cohabbing, and getting viable sacks IS possible without getting the male munched. Cohabbing IS risky, but not a death sentence for a male. Leaving him in ENTIRELY TOO LONG can be however.


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## salmonpink (Aug 24, 2012)

Yeah I was not really interested in a communial setup just if it was possible with sac mates but more interested in breeding.


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## advan (Aug 24, 2012)

_Poecilotheria ornata_ is not communal. Use the search function for your original question. It has been covered many times. 

Learn how to use it. --------> Clicky It'll be your best friend.

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## salmonpink (Aug 24, 2012)

I did. I got mixed answers. Figured I'd stick with the pro. This site has helped me a lot. I was only curious if sac mates werecominuial. I no that ornatas r not.


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## Stan Schultz (Aug 24, 2012)

salmonpink said:


> I recently ended up with a 5" male and female ornata that I just recently found out they r sac mates. What's that mean towards breeding. I have been researching a lot on breeding sac mates but not getting clear answers.


First, forgive me. I have hijacked entire threads, and become involved in huge flame wars before, for saying this. But, I ardently think it needs repeating.

There's a serious problem with intense inbreeding, and anybody involved in animal husbandry is painfully aware of it. It's even the basis for most places banning human marriages closer than first cousins. Intense inbreeding tends to conserve all mutations, good and bad.

One of my favorite grim jokes is to remark that in a given population of humans there's obviously been far too much inbreeding, and I actually ran into a very practical case of it several decades ago.

I found myself on the island of Sumba in Indonesia, visiting some people in the little farming village of Sumbawa. (I tried finding it with Google Earth, but no joy. But, there are hundreds of unnamed, little villages on the island.) It was the kind of place where even getting to the next village was a major, one or two day undertaking because the roads were little more than two ruts in winding strips of mud between the volcanic rocks.

I was astounded to see that a truly large percentage of people in the village were either cross eyed, or possessed a "lazy eye." After asking a few questions I found out that since WWII the only outsiders to visit the village had been a handful of Catholic priests. (I was quite a sensation because most of the residents had never seen a 6 foot, 200 pound, blue-eyed, blond, white guy before!) Thus, a young Sumbawanese coming of age had very limited choices for mates. And, the rest as they say, is history. Everybody carried the gene. Perhaps 1/4 or more of the residents got a double dose of it. And, I have no idea of what other less obvious traits were also rampant throughout the population.

Without some serious selective breeding, something like that is what we're eventually facing with our tarantulas.

I've had people yell at me, "But, inbreeding, and even incest, are at least common if not the rule in nature! And, wild populations don't suffer from inbreeding." My reply is summed up in the following quote from *Natural is Better...*:

It is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of mortality rates in nature. Let's consider a generic tarantula: The female matures at age five years and dies at age twenty. Her reproductive career is fifteen years long. During that time she mates with one male per year and produces one eggsac of 200 babies per year. Thus, during her life she produces 15 X 200 = 3,000 babies.

If the population of her species is to remain stable over the long run, she must replace herself and fifteen males, a total of sixteen offspring. All the rest of those 3,000 babies (3000-16 = 2984) must die. The mortality rate is a brutal 2984/3000 X 100 = *99.47%!*

In order to survive long enough to reproduce, any baby tarantula -

*Must have absolutely no defects.

    Must be incredibly lucky!*

Thus, in nature, not only are all the defective ones weeded out, but an overwhelming majority of the perfect but unlucky ones as well.

In captive breeding the first reaction is to lovingly save each and every one of the little darlings. (Just as with humans, and with the same effects, see my example above. But, I'll not discuss or mention that topic again in this thread.) And, the end result is that since the late 1980s or early 1990s, since we started breeding tarantulas in numbers, I have noticed a growing number of reports among enthusiasts of developmental defects and an increase in the percentage of deaths of babies in those kinds of tarantulas that breed most often in our cages.

The problem is that we've removed natural selection entirely, and failed to replace it with good selective breeding practices. We breed whatever we're presented with, with little or no attention to family lines or individual traits, good or bad. And, the hobby is going to pay for it dearly in a few decades.

This prompts me to make the following recommendations. (*And, this is always what starts the flame wars!*)

1) Be very careful of what parents you use. Do everything you can to ensure that they're not closely related. There are times when you might want to violate this rule, but you should do so with great trepidation.

   a) If only a few individuals were brought into captivity and bred, intense inbreeding cannot be helped. _Lasiodora parahybana_ and most of the _Poecilotheria_ species fall into this category. For these, the enthusiast must be extremely cautious about which individuals are used as breeders, and culling must be brutal.

   b) The enthusiast is trying to establish a captive strain of tarantulas (comparable to a breed of dogs or horses), is trying to fix some desirable characteristic in the captive population, or is trying to breed an undesirable characteristic out of a population. Here again, intensive selective breeding and brutal culling should be practiced.

2) Culling is not a dirty word! It doesn't necessarily mean killing an animal, although that's the expedient and therefore most common method of culling. But, some sort of sorting or culling must be practiced or we're going to end up with the equivalent of that population of cross-eyed Sumbawanese in our tarantulas.

The most practical way, and the one I suggest (*And, here comes the slammer!*) is to merely leave the siblings from an eggsac together for a few weeks to give them an opportunity to cannibalize their smaller, weaker, slower, deformed, or more stupid brood mates. If you sacrifice even 1/4 of the babies this way, you may lose a little cash if you're a dealer, or your family may disown you if you're an enthusiast just tying to breed some kind of tarantula for the fun of it, but in the long rum you'll be doing the hobby and the tarantulas you love a huge favor.

It's tough love. And, playing God is never simple or easy, and is seldom very satisfying. But, now that you've accepted the job, you need to accept the responsibility!

What you do from here is your choice.


Enjoy your little 7-legged, 9-eyed What-the-!@#$!-is-that?

:biggrin:

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## Storm76 (Aug 24, 2012)

The one thing that would interest me in this case, is simply if there are ANY whatsoever scientifally backed up studies regarding "inbreeding with Tarantulas" and that it's causing "bad gene material" and defective T's. Honestly, after all the time the "we know so very little about them", but transferring the results of inbreeding from humans to T's...I don't know, Stan. I'm no biochemist, biologist or anything the like, admittedly and I will say it does sound logical to look upon it the way you wrote there, but haven't T's been inbred for generations already? Are there ANY reports about the offspring of those generations of T's that have been inbred with MORE defects than normal or the like?

Not saying it's not true, I'm merely curious what the -facts- are regarding T's - not humans

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## advan (Aug 24, 2012)

Hmm, Humans vs tarantulas.  Should we start separating our feeder colonies too?

With how long you've been in the hobby, I would of thought you would of tried an inbreeding experiment to actually prove your point that inbreeding will develop issues down the road. Although I wouldn't recommend your beloved _G. rosea_ for that project. 

Until there is proof, your post is an opinion not fact. 

I suggest you also use the search function and find the member that is on his 7th generation of inbred _Pterinochilus murinus_.

I am not disagreeing that we should try to stay away from inbreeding as much as possible, but how many of the species we have in the hobby today came from but a few WC specimens?

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## salmonpink (Aug 24, 2012)

Wow!! Never looked at it like that.


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## Thistles (Aug 24, 2012)

I work extensively with tropical fish. When I was young, fancy guppies and zebra danios were both staple hobby fish and considered nearly bomb-proof. Conventional wisdom in the fish hobby has also been that breeding siblings together or back to their parents won't really matter. Most of the fancy varieties of fish are from extremely inbred lines. At first there was no effect, but it has been interesting to watch as fish that were formerly considered indestructible have become fairly fragile and also to see the increase in birth defects. A recent shipment of 20 koi had 4 fish that were missing their opercula (gill covers). Almost every shipment of zebra danios comes with several fish with deformed jaws that won't close. Fancy guppies are now one of our most fragile fish and are our 2nd highest loss after platies, another "hardy" hobby staple that comes exclusively in fancy line bred colors.

The freshwater fish hobby is much older than tarantulaculture, and linebreeding has been occurring for much longer. I think that we will start to see the same things in our hobby that fishkeepers have if we continue the same way and follow the same idea that inbreeding only matters in people. Look at fancy dogs and cats! Nothing has more problems than non-working fancy dogs (bulldogs, pugs, chihuahuas...) that are farthest from their original form! Their eyes fall out, they can't breathe, they have skin and allergy issues, their joints are bad... we selected only for looks or a single function and let all these defective animals reproduce!

I also do believe it is happening in tarantulas already. I received a tiny sling as a freebie from a respected breeder. It must have been only 2nd or 3rd instar. It arrived with a very tiny abdomen, but appeared otherwise healthy. Over the next month or so I watched it slowly starve to death. I offered it smooshed crickets, cricket drumsticks and even flightless fruit flies. It pounced on all of the offered food items with gusto, and I'd feel better every time, thinking that it would be nice and fat the next time I saw it. Then, every time, the next morning I would wake to a tiny, skinny sling and a dead prey item rotting on the bottom of his vial. He was able to grab and kill his prey, but not to feed off them. I don't know what the problem was, and I felt terrible when he did finally die, but I honestly don't know what more I could have done. I don't want to be one of those people who blames something (DKS!) other than her own inexperience when one of her charges dies, but really I think there must have been some defect in this particular spider.

Anyway, I guess all my rambling really only means that I think Stan will be proven correct in the long run. Why would we think that something that has been proven to apply to humans and dogs and horses and cats and fish and birds and guinea pigs and... wouldn't apply to tarantulas? Just because we haven't been breeding them long enough to see the ill-effects in force? I think he's 100% correct that we need to cull if we are going to inbreed instead of just posting, "LF MM B. smithi!" taking the first daddy that appears and then coddling every little $piderling. I let my widow sacmates cannibalize ruthlessly, and I plan to practice the same method of culling when I start breeding my Ts.

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## advan (Aug 24, 2012)

Thistles said:


> The freshwater fish hobby is much older than tarantulaculture, and linebreeding has been occurring for much longer. I think that we will start to see the same things in our hobby that fishkeepers have if we continue the same way and follow the same idea that inbreeding only matters in people. Look at fancy dogs and cats! Nothing has more problems than non-working fancy dogs (bulldogs, pugs, chihuahuas...) that are farthest from their original form! Their eyes fall out, they can't breathe, they have skin and allergy issues, their joints are bad... we selected only for looks or a single function and let all these defective animals reproduce!


Inverts and verts are a whole different ballgame. I will let Jay elaborate on this if he sees it. 



> I also do believe it is happening in tarantulas already. I received a tiny sling as a freebie from a respected breeder. It must have been only 2nd or 3rd instar. It arrived with a very tiny abdomen, but appeared otherwise healthy. Over the next month or so I watched it slowly starve to death. I offered it smooshed crickets, cricket drumsticks and even flightless fruit flies. It pounced on all of the offered food items with gusto, and I'd feel better every time, thinking that it would be nice and fat the next time I saw it. Then, every time, the next morning I would wake to a tiny, skinny sling and a dead prey item rotting on the bottom of his vial. He was able to grab and kill his prey, but not to feed off them. I don't know what the problem was, and I felt terrible when he did finally die, but I honestly don't know what more I could have done. I don't want to be one of those people who blames something (DKS!) other than her own inexperience when one of her charges dies, but really I think there must have been some defect in this particular spider.


This is a bad assumption. This could go along the lines of us taking away the majority of natural selection, do to us caring for every single spiderling we hatch. Letting some cannibalism to ween out the weaker ones is not a bad idea but it takes a lot longer then just a few weeks. It can take many instars for spiderlings to start really cannibalizing each other. I have seen this with _Avicularia_, _Heterscodra_, and _Psalmopoeus_. The other possibility is your spider was never fed before it was shipped by the breeder. I have seen quite a few from my hatchings molt to 2i, never ate but other wise looked and acted healthy only to eventually perish. That's one reason I don't consider a breeding successful until I have spiderlings that are feeding.



> Anyway, I guess all my rambling really only means that I think Stan will be proven correct in the long run. Why would we think that something that has been proven to apply to humans and dogs and horses and cats and fish and birds and guinea pigs and... wouldn't apply to tarantulas? Just because we haven't been breeding them long enough to see the ill-effects in force? I think he's 100% correct that we need to cull if we are going to inbreed instead of just posting, "LF MM B. smithi!" taking the first daddy that appears and then coddling every little $piderling. I let my widow sacmates cannibalize ruthlessly, and I plan to practice the same method of culling when I start breeding my Ts.


If this the way you feel then you are pretty much stuck with WC spiders. Even then there is still a possibility that the other sex you acquire is a relative. Do you know where to get cheap DNA testing?

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## Thistles (Aug 24, 2012)

advan said:


> Inverts and verts are a whole different ballgame. I will let Jay elaborate on this if he sees it.


 Of course they are different, but the same genetic principles regarding dominant and recessive genes hold true across kingdoms, let alone phyla. I would be interested in Jay's opinion, though.



advan said:


> This is a bad assumption. This could go along the lines of us taking away the majority of natural selection, do to us caring for every single spiderling we hatch. Letting some cannibalism to ween out the weaker ones is not a bad idea but it takes a lot longer then just a few weeks. It can take many instars for spiderlings to start really cannibalizing each other. I have seen this with _Avicularia_, _Heterscodra_, and _Psalmopoeus_. The other possibility is your spider was never fed before it was shipped by the breeder. I have seen quite a few from my hatchings molt to 2i, never ate but other wise looked and acted healthy only to eventually perish. That's one reason I don't consider a breeding successful until I have spiderlings that are feeding.


 Of course it has to do with natural selection. I think Stan's post expanded this discussion to more than a "should I breed sacmates" thread. He stated that what we have done is essentially removed natural selection, but then not stepped in to replace Ma Nature with selective breeding. Inbreeding itself isn't necessarily bad if it is done with exceptional specimens and only occasionally. If there is no way to remove those individuals that are born with an undesirable trait, we will start to see the ill effects. I suppose I should have been clearer and stated that my experience may not have been the result of inbreeding necessarily, but I do think it was the result of eliminating natural selection. That sling didn't have a chance in captivity, much less if it were born in the wild.



advan said:


> If this the way you feel then you are pretty much stuck with WC spiders. Even then there is still a possibility that the other sex you acquire is a relative. Do you know where to get cheap DNA testing?


 Nope, you are making my comments way more extreme. I am just advocating culling and breeding for quality, rather than just matching any 2 spiders and saving every little sling. I also make an effort to acquire my spiders from different sources at different ages to minimize the chance that they are full siblings. I haven't bred any Ts yet, but my boyfriend breeds and we are preparing to begin breeding some of mine. When, say, only a dozen or so spiders are originally imported, that is a very narrow gene pool and there is little to be done about the selection of mates. All I'm saying is that we need to replace that with better breeding practices.


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## advan (Aug 24, 2012)

Thistles said:


> Nope, you are making my comments way more extreme. I am just advocating culling and breeding for quality, rather than just matching any 2 spiders and saving every little sling. I also make an effort to acquire my spiders from different sources at different ages to minimize the chance that they are full siblings. I haven't bred any Ts yet, but my boyfriend breeds and we are preparing to begin breeding some of mine. When, say, only a dozen or so spiders are originally imported, that is a very narrow gene pool and there is little to be done about the selection of mates. All I'm saying is that we need to replace that with better breeding practices.


Here's my question for you. What are these traits that you are looking for? Is it size? Strength? Color? Growth rate? How do you know what spider carries weaker genes then the next? Who is to decide what is an except able adult specimen to breed? This is very far fetched in a hobby were people start off with their first spider and only a few months later are trying to breed it. With a majority of them knowing little at all, much less about Theraphosidae taxonomy. I think we have a much bigger issue with people misidentifying the spiders they are pairing then pairing sac mates. Just my two cents. -Chad


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## jayefbe (Aug 24, 2012)

I'll try to address many things brought up in this thread.

First off, any species in the hobby that are not currently being imported in large numbers, or were originally based on very large numbers of WC stock are already very inbred. I would guess (totally unscientific guess, but there do exist the resources to test it, anyone want to send me a couple grand and DNA samples from a hundred individuals?) that most species in the hobby have an effective population size of less than a hundred. That is so tiny that effects of inbreeding should be quite obvious. With a group of animals in which a few clutches could sustain hobbyist demand, inbreeding is likely to occur on its own. How many G. pulchra clutches are hatched every year in the US? Not many. So how many breeding pairs are inadvertently related?

Line breeding is very different from simple inbreeding. Line breeding consists of selecting for specific traits. Inbreeding does not consist of any deliberate artificial selection. The importance of this is that line breeding will also inadvertently select for alleles that are physically linked (through physical proximity on the chromosome) to the traits under selection. This is important because some of these alleles will also be deleterious. So, line breeding will always increase the frequency of deleterious alleles. Since straight up inbreeding isn't selecting for any specific trait, the increase in deleterious alleles is not as significant. Furthermore, any deleterious alleles will be purged over time, rather than maintained as occurs in artificial selection. 

Perhaps most importantly, inbreeding is not always deleterious. There are many plants and animals for which inbreeding is a beneficial trait that has evolved over time (yes, inbreeding is sometimes a good thing for a population). Deleterious effects of inbreeding arise due to the existence of a significant percentage deleterious recessive alleles. Each human carries a handful of deleterious recessive alleles that would be lethal in a homozygous individual. Since we share half of our genome with our siblings, procreating with your sister significantly increases the probability of these genetic defects becoming exposed. However, humans have a high genetic load of deleterious alleles. Not all organisms do. It is possible for a population to purge their genetic load through inbreeding. After a period of time in which there is reduced fitness due to inbreeding, the deleterious alleles are lost due to natural selection, and inbreeding can continue without ill effect. 

There are some species of plants that have been inbred (and I'm talking self-fertilized, not sibling fertilized) for thousands of generations. There are other species of plants that won't last two generations of inbreeding without showing decreased seed output or weird defects. It depends on the history of the populations, what type of mating system they use (mostly inbred, mostly outbred, or a little of both) and the natural genetic load that exists. The point is, it's hard to guess how deleterious inbreeding will be without any direct evidence. As humans, we're predisposed to believe that inbreeding is always bad, because it truly has very severe effects when it occurs in our species. But that's not always the case in all sexually reproducing species.  

Another point, just because a handful of slings from any clutch won't survive even under optimal conditions isn't necessarily due to inbreeding. It could be caused by developmental issues not associated with genetics, or it could be due to incompatible genetics that naturally occur even in highly outbred pairings. The point is, deleterious inbreeding would result in significant reduction in clutch size and clutch survival, and over a few generations should continually get worse. A single sling is in no way evidence of that. If you have a large percentage of an entire clutch doing that, then something may be going on. 

I know a user on here, Garrick I believe?, who inbred OBTs over several generations to see if he could discern any negative effects of inbreeding. He found nothing, and I used to own a handful of his offspring. It's possible that inbreeding will eventually produce issues in our collection. Maybe some species will respond poorly to inbreeding while others won't. Up to now, I haven't seen any evidence that inbreeding has a significant negative effect. 

I personally would always outbreed as much as possible, not for fear of deleterious effects of inbreeding, but in an effort to maintain as much genetic diversity as possible. However, if I have a freshly shed MM and the only females are somehow related, I wouldn't hesitate to do the breeding.

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## Thistles (Aug 24, 2012)

advan said:


> Here's my question for you. What are these traits that you are looking for? Is it size? Strength? Color? Growth rate? How do you know what spider carries weaker genes then the next? Who is to decide what is an except able adult specimen to breed? This is very far fetched in a hobby were people start off with their first spider and only a few months later are trying to breed it. With a majority of them knowing little at all, much less about Theraphosidae taxonomy. I think we have a much bigger issue with people misidentifying the spiders they are pairing then pairing sac mates. Just my two cents. -Chad


 The "trait" would be _fitness_. I think you are misunderstanding me. I'm not crusading against inbreeding. I am saying we need to cull better and if possible diversify our gene pool. I do agree that inadvertent hybrids are a big issue, from importers mislabeling to translation errors to simple owner confusion. I had an "A. avicularia" that became an A. metallica. I asked the guy I got it from as a sling and he said he had indeed produced A. metallica at the same time, and it was possible he mixed up my sling. Either way, I won't be breeding that spider.

Jayefbe, thanks for the clear and informative post. My particular sling example was more to point out that breeders should be more vigilant in weeding out weak slings than to say, "this happened because he had an unclefather and a sistermother."

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## Stan Schultz (Aug 25, 2012)

[size=+1]*AS I PREDICTED, SO STARTS THE WAR!*[/SIZE]​


Storm76 said:


> The one thing that would interest me in this case, is simply if there are ANY whatsoever scientifally backed up studies regarding "inbreeding with Tarantulas" and that it's causing "bad gene material" and defective T's. ...





Storm76 said:


> ... Are there ANY reports about the offspring of those generations of T's that have been inbred with MORE defects than normal or the like? ...


Rick C. West did so several years ago with a short life span species of African tarantula. It was written up in the British Tarantula Society's publication and is a matter of record. My memory is failing me, but after a very few generations of mating brother to sister (something like 3 to 6) the mortality rate from molting problems approached something like 90%! Perhaps one of the readers of this will have access to that paper. I can't find my copy.

But, we really don't need an extensive, expensive, exceedingly time consuming research base to be absolutely sure it's correct. Geneticists, animal husbandry types, ecologists, even Stone Age goat herders were aware of the basic principle. And, in *VIRTUALLY EVERY* living organism that proliferates by sexual reproduction (defined as the mixing of genetic material between the parents, not the clandestine tryst in the back seat of your Dad's Chevy!) that has been examined, the fact holds true. If you believe that gravity is universal, so too do you need to believe this one!



Storm76 said:


> ... Honestly, after all the time the "we know so very little about them", but transferring the results of inbreeding from humans to T's...I don't know, Stan. I'm no biochemist, biologist or anything the like, admittedly and I will say it does sound logical to look upon it the way you wrote there, but haven't T's been inbred for generations already? ...


While curious little boys and grizzled old flatulences who still thought like curious little boys have probably been keeping tarantulas as pets, at least until their Dads found out, for millenniums, no one ever thought to write a whole book about them until 1958 when Dr. William J. Baerg published his little book, _The Tarantula_, describing a lot about the biology, lifestyle, and care of tarantulas. (1) So we start counting that year as the beginning of the arachnoculture hobby. I was a freshmen in high school. That's how new our hobby is! About 54 years!

And, no one really bothered breeding tarantulas until after 1985 when the Mexican redknee was listed in Appendix II of the CITES Treaty. Only after we could no longer get the best selling, most popular kind of tarantula in history any more did we begin to try breeding _B. smithi_. Then, 10 years later, all other _Brachypelma_ were also listed in Appendix II, giving the breeding effort a real kick in the pants.

So, lets say that we've been breeding a few species of tarantulas since 1995. And, let's say that any species of interest had a life cycle of 5 years. (Note that this isn't LIFE SPAN!)

2012 - 1995 = 17 years.

With a 5 year life cycle:

17 ÷ 5 = 3.4 generations in captivity. Fewer than 4 generations! For a relatively fast growing, short life cycle species!

What about _B. smithi_?

2012 - 1985 = 27 years.

With a 10 year life cycle:

27 ÷ 10 = 2.7 generations in captivity. Fewer than 3 generations!

So, right now we're only beginning to see the beginning of the avalanche, the _avant garde_.



Storm76 said:


> ... Not saying it's not true, I'm merely curious what the -facts- are regarding T's - not humans


This is something that I couldn't mention in TKG for lack of space: While there are a lot of biological characteristics that differ, even contradict each other, between tarantulas and many other organisms, especially vertebrates, there are also a lot of biological characteristics that we share. Those characteristics that were evolved before the great split between our evolutionary lines are generally conserved by both branches. We only differ in those characteristics that were evolved since that fateful day, somewhere between 600 and 650 million years ago, apparently at the end of the *Great Snowball earth*.

A list of the things we share would include a lot that most enthusiasts wouldn't begin to understand, but here are a few very basic ones that almost everybody should:

1) We're both eukaryotes. That means that we're composed of cells that contain nuclei and other cell organelles. Contrast that with bacteria with bodies composed of a single capsule and filled with a "soup" of biochemicals, but nothing organized above the molecular level.

2) We both reproduce by means of sexual reproduction. That is, our parents both contributed genetic material to produce us. Contrast that with many protozoans and other organisms that only reproduce by budding, dividing, cloning, etc. (Be careful here: There are lots of life forms that have secondarily lost the ability to reproduce sexually, some coelenterates, worms, and insects for instance. These don't count in this discussion.)

3) We both use the Krebs Citric Acid Cycle as the foundation of energy production.

4) We both employ DNA as the mediator of inheritable characteristics..

5) We both follow the basic laws of genetics. (Although there is limited proof of this, all available data confirms this hypothesis, and there is no data to the contrary.)

6) We are both multicellular. That is, we are composed of an integrated, organized mass of cells functioning as a unit.

7) We are both bilaterally symmetrical. (There is some debate about whether this is the result of inheritance from a common progenitor, or a case of parallel evolution because of the radically different embryology evidenced by the two groups.)

8) Our bodies are both organized into specific tissues, organs, and organ systems, each of which has specialized functions.

9) We both engage in "predation." That is we both subsist by eating other things. Contrast that with plants, archeans and many bacteria for instance, which are more or less self sufficient.

And, there are many more. Few or none of these have any direct consequences on tarantulas' care in captivity, so these characters almost always go unmentioned. But, now you know.

So, when you start comparing tarantulas and humans, your first challenge is to distinguish between those characteristics that are exceedingly ancient, and those that are merely "mildly" ancient, i.e., evolved after the big split about 600 million years ago. And, it appears that Darwinian evolution, including natural selection, in some form or other has been at work since the dawn of life on Earth, several billion years before that.

Since we apparently share a common genetic system, and the same selective forces are acting on both we and our tarantulas (at least in nature), that in this case at least, we *CAN* use humans or at least vertebrates as a working model. And, if you decide not to, the onus is on you to explain why you think there's a difference. And, this argument must withstand the test of time: Whether you're comparing apples to apples because the characteristic predates the great split, or apples to oranges because the characteristic evolved after the great split.

Now, if you want to start talking about waste removal (e.g., defecation, urination), for instance, the exact opposite is true because it seems that almost every major evolutionary line of organism has adopted a different strategy, and we have to be really, REALLY careful about identifying similarities and using one as a model to explain another.

Isn't biology a trip? 

And, you thought that keeping such simple, primitive organisms as your little 8-legged buddy was going to be SSOOOooo simple!

:biggrin:

:laugh:

:roflmao:


(1) Copies of the original edition of _The Tarantula_ are still occasionally available on the used book market. And, Fitzgerald publishing reprinted that original edition in 1997, so you can still get copies, if not originals. Perform an Internet search for *used book dealers* or *used booksellers*. When you find one, type into their search box *Baerg tarantula* to see a listing of what they have. *BE SURE TO CHECK THE PUBLICATION DATE BEFORE PLACING AN ORDER IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR AN ORIGINAL COPY!*

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## syndicate (Aug 25, 2012)

I usually try and stay out of these types of threads but honestly there is zero evidence that long term inbreeding is going to affect your spiderlings!!I don't know if it has ever been studied but I often wonder if inbreeding within colonies of tarantulas in the wild can also happen??
Anyhow there are species of tarantulas in the hobby currently that came from very small wild caught imports and have been inbreeding together for years now with no issues!Look at most of the _Poecilotheria_ species for example..How often are new _P.regalis_ bloodlines brought into the hobby heh?Or the other _Poecilotheria_ species..I once heard that the entire population of _rufilata_ in the hobby came from under 20 specimens.I have no data to back that up but if it is true they are still being captive bred fine today no?Another quick example of a species that was imported in very small numbers is _Acanthocurria geniculata_.When these were smuggled out of Brazil there weren't many brought in to the hobby..1000's of these are produced yearly with no problems!
Many many captive bred species in the hobby that you see available for sale are the result of inbreeding.When an import of spiderlings comes in to the USA (Or any other country) and said breeder gets 10 or 12 of them to establish a breeding group should he just let all the males die off and cross his fingers someone imports more years down the road??!Absolutely not!This is how species get established in the hobby and its been going on for a long time now.If you have more bloodlines available should you use them?Absolutely!But this is often impossible with many rare species that are hard to obtain so it is essential to breed siblings if you want to keep said species around for more people to enjoy!
I also think trying to compare inbreeding between humans and Arachnids is ridiculous Stan and you know better than that hehe ;]
To the original poster chances are your Poecilotheria ornata are alreadly inbred and have been for years so you decide what route is best!
-Chris

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## Tarac (Aug 25, 2012)

syndicate said:


> I also think trying to compare inbreeding between humans and Arachnids is ridiculous Stan and you know better than that hehe ;]
> To the original poster chances are your Poecilotheria ornata are alreadly inbred and have been for years so you decide what route is best!
> -Chris


Um... we are all built from the same nucleotides, are we not?  Number of chromosomes, etc. is really what will distinguish the more "sensitive" to inbreeding from the rest generally speaking.  Stan is right.  

Hard to predict what is "deleterious" when you are talking about captive spiders.  The thing to remember is that you are not truly keeping that species around by starting a line of pet trade spiders from handful of WC ancestors but rather making a slightly (at best) different spider altogether that may not be fit in the wild at all anymore because what is deleterious en natura might have no relevance in captivity.  The tropical fish person here will probably know of several fish species which are now extinct in the wild but survive in captivity due to popularity in the trade.  At least one is unfit for wild re-introduction, too susceptible to disease now in it's original habitat.  It thrives in aquaria still.  It's basically geographic separation- one population left in the wild and one population that occurs only inside terraria.  

Like so many T issues, they are not understood.  You can't prove that so many of the seemingly random deaths aren't related to poor genetics anymore than you can prove that they are so that is a fruitless argument to pose.

What we have is a ton of spiders that are all derived from that original handful of WC stock.  That is, in effect, the line breeding to which Jay refers- keeping the genes within a limited group by virtue of there only being a limited group to select from period.  Not on purpose, as in dogs, but by default.  Inbreeding on a very short term scale, randomly, truly isn't harmful every time (but it can be- Stan's island population example is fitting because they are randomly inbred, not line bred like royalty formerly were in Europe.  I have seen this "lazy" or "cross eyed" effect all over the place in rural Latin America from Patagonia to Mexico, most recently in Pedernales in the DR but it is common in many places with limited population mobility; seems to be one of the earliest signs of too much funny business in humans).  But just because there isn't any evidence we can see _yet_ doesn't mean that it isn't harmful.  The gist of what I am reading is that we just accept it since there is really nothing else that can be done short of losing the captive populations altogether.  And I do agree that having some is better than losing them altogether, both wild and captive.  But that doesn't make it biologically sound.  We're just defending the practice because there is no choice.  If there were, I'm sure the argument would sound completely different.


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## Thistles (Aug 25, 2012)

Tarac said:


> The tropical fish person here will probably know of several fish species which are now extinct in the wild but survive in captivity due to popularity in the trade.  At least one is unfit for wild re-introduction, too susceptible to disease now in it's original habitat.  It thrives in aquaria still.  It's basically geographic separation- one population left in the wild and one population that occurs only inside terraria.


 I think you are thinking of the white cloud mountain minnow, _Tanichthys albonubes._ There are other examples, but this is one of the most popular aquarium fish and it was thought extinct until a small population was discovered on an island recently.


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## Tarac (Aug 25, 2012)

Thistles said:


> I think you are thinking of the white cloud mountain minnow, _Tanichthys albonubes._ There are other examples, but this is one of the most popular aquarium fish and it was thought extinct until a small population was discovered on an island recently.


I was thinking Ameca splendens which is totally extinct in the wild, but yes there are a number of small fish species which are extinct or almost completely extinct in the wild.  White clouds can be re-introduced though, they were collected by the droves and have been popular consistently where _Ameca splendens_ had a major drop in popularity in aquaculture and bottlenecked very badly.  Still available rarely and perfectly hardy in most aquaria, they don't seem to be able to survive in any of their former habitats due to sensitivity to pathogens which have been present in those systems for untold centuries (or more).  

With the white cloud though there is still the question of whether it is able to be considered an equivalent to the wild counterparts.  Kind of like wild vs. farmed salmon.  Not really the same anymore.


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## Stan Schultz (Aug 26, 2012)

syndicate said:


> I usually try and stay out of these types of threads but honestly there is zero evidence that long term inbreeding is going to affect your spiderlings!! ...


I presume that you didn't read *my posting (#20)* just before yours. If not, please do so now. Pay particular attention to my very first paragraph, beginning "Rick C. West..."



syndicate said:


> ... I don't know if it has ever been studied but I often wonder if inbreeding within colonies of tarantulas in the wild can also happen?? ...


It happens all the time, and very frequently. Read *my posting (#10)*, paying particular attention to the paragraphs about halfway down, beginning with I've had people yell at me...



syndicate said:


> ... Anyhow there are species of tarantulas in the hobby currently that came from very small wild caught imports and have been inbreeding together for years ...


An issue I addressed at length in *my posting (#10)*.

In addition, because of the highly variable generation times between the various kinds of tarantulas, *NUMBER OF YEARS* is a bogus yardstick. What you really need to pay attention to is the *NUMBER OF GENERATIONS* that a given mutation has had to permeate a population (i.e., the number of opportunities that a given gene has had in order to re-sort itself through that population).



syndicate said:


> ... now with no issues! ...


Go back and read *my posting (#10)*, paying particular attention to the paragraph about half way down, just beneath the blue quote, that begins with, "In captive breeding..."



syndicate said:


> ... Look at most of the _Poecilotheria_ species for example. How often are new _P.regalis_ bloodlines brought into the hobby heh?Or the other _Poecilotheria_ species..I once heard that the entire population of _rufilata_ in the hobby came from under 20 specimens.I have no data to back that up but if it is true they are still being captive bred fine today no?Another quick example of a species that was imported in very small numbers is _Acanthocurria geniculata_.When these were smuggled out of Brazil there weren't many brought in to the hobby..1000's of these are produced yearly with no problems! ..


The _Poecilotheria_ are a good real-world example of the case that I presented in *my posting (#20)* for a relatively short generation cycle species. I quote the math below.

2012 - 1995 = 17 years.

With a 5 year life cycle:

17 ÷ 5 = 3.4 generations in captivity. Fewer than 4 generations! For a relatively fast growing, short life cycle species!

It is also interesting to note that I've seen a few comments by people who've been paying attention, that the individuals with 7" or 8" DLS are becoming rarer, and I remember one person positing that was because of the intense inbreeding.

And, _Acanthocurria geniculata_ (which has been bred for a shorter period of time, and may have a longer generation time) might look like this.

2012 - 2000 = 12 years.

With a 5 year life cycle:

12 ÷ 5 = 2.4 generations in captivity. Not even 3 generations in captivity!

And, I stick by my assertion, "So, right now we're only beginning to see the beginning of the avalanche, the _avant garde_."



syndicate said:


> ... When an import of spiderlings comes in to the USA (Or any other country) and said breeder gets 10 or 12 of them to establish a breeding group should he just let all the males die off and cross his fingers someone imports more years down the road??!Absolutely not! ...


No, the breeder does not have to allow all the males to die off without breeding them. That would be foolish. As stated or inferred in *my posting (#10)*, however, the breeder should inspect and cull out any males with undesirable or deficient characteristics before beginning a breeding program (and do the same with the females), the selective breeding part. Then, with the resulting babies, the breeder should do something to weed out the "...smaller, weaker, slower, deformed, or more stupid brood mates," the culling part. To not employ selective breeding and culling principles is as foolish as not breeding the males at all!



syndicate said:


> ... I also think trying to compare inbreeding between humans and Arachnids is ridiculous Stan ...


Heaven forefend that I should try to influence your "beliefs," and I am certainly not prepared to discuss any religious or moral issues you see, but the human race has been comparing the breeding of animals and humans and using the gathered data in their husbandry practices and choices of mates since the first farmers in old Mesopotamia. It's a bit late to start objecting now.



syndicate said:


> ... and you know better than that ...


With respect, you are in no position to tell me what I know or don't know, morally, ethically, or otherwise, just as I am in no position to try to influence your fundamental beliefs. And, that statement could be construed as a personal attack. If that's true, it's very bad form. We're discussing and examining the issues on their intrinsic merits, not on the basis of who is better at demeaning the other. I'll not mention this again. Hopefully, neither will you.

To sum up my position:

1) We are currently breeding any and every individual tarantula that we possibly can. (Probably because of the overwhelming demand for them, and the prospect of financial gain.)

2) Little or no effort is made towards selective breeding to prevent defects from being passed on to succeeding generations.

3) Little or no effort is being made to cull defective individuals (i.e., the "smaller, weaker, slower, deformed, or more stupid brood mates") before being released to the general public for further breeding.

4) And indeed, most enthusiasts breeding tarantulas are entirely unaware of the issues. And, of those who have been introduced to those issues, many are unwilling to acknowledge that a problem is looming on the horizon, much less adopt the practices to solve the problem.

5) And, there is a very real problem looming on the horizon.

6) And lastly, all this is true in spite of the fact that the art of animal and plant husbandry has been developing for 15,000 years or more, and the science of animal and plant husbandry has been developing since the days of Darwin and Mendel in the middle of the nineteenth century!

We really need to catch up on current events, gang!


Enjoy your little 7-legged, 9-eyed What-the-!@#$!-is-that?

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## Quazgar (Aug 26, 2012)

jayefbe said:


> There are many plants and animals for which inbreeding is a beneficial trait that has evolved over time (yes, inbreeding is sometimes a good thing for a population).


Just wondering if you have an example of animals for which long-term inbreeding has been proven beneficial? I think if we are comparing between organisms, a tarantula-to-human comparison will be much closer and more accurate than a tarantula-to-plant comparison.

I will readily admit that I am not in a position to add more than my thoughts to this debate, and I certainly have no evidence to back up any thought I may have on the subject, but I do think that one of the biggest issues is what Stan has raised in that there just hasn't been enough time to know what the result of inbreeding in tarantulas may be. It seems like the people who are arguing that it will cause no problems are basing that on at most a handful of generations, but what happens when we get dozens or hundreds of generations in?

Of course this doesn't change the fact that there may be no way to fully avoid inbreeding, but perhaps out of caution one should try to avoid breeding sac mates unless absolutely necessary to keep the species going in the hobby. I would think a somewhat more distant relative would be preferential to a known closer relative.


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## Stan Schultz (Aug 26, 2012)

Quazgar said:


> Just wondering if you have an example of animals for which long-term inbreeding has been proven beneficial? ...


How about the beef steak and potatoes you had for dinner yesterday? It is arguable that because we were able to selectively inbreed and cull the *wild aurochs* and *potato*, that there are more of both alive today than ever before in history or prehistory. And, they've been spread from their restricted initial ranges to literally every available habitat around the planet. If the doomsdayers are correct and human civilization or the human race disappears on December 21, 2012 as predicted, these and hundreds of other domestic species have a million times better chance of surviving someplace than they ever would have had back in the "good old days."



Quazgar said:


> ... I think if we are comparing between organisms, a tarantula-to-human comparison will be much closer and more accurate than a tarantula-to-plant comparison. ...


Possibly, but the basic principles of genetics and animal/plant husbandry are the same for both vast groups of organisms. Only the details are different. The principles of sexual reproduction, genetics and selection (whether natural or artificial is largely irrelevant) go that extremely far back into the history of life on Earth. Literally a couple of *BILLION* years!



Quazgar said:


> ... one of the biggest issues is what Stan has raised in that there just hasn't been enough time to know what the result of inbreeding in tarantulas may be. ...


_Au contraire_. There are actually three huge issues.

1) We're failing miserably to use even the most basic principles of animal husbandry, artificial selection and culling, to prevent the proliferation of all sorts of anomalies and mutations throughout the captive bred tarantula populations.

2) If we wait for hundreds or even just a dozen generations to gather data, the damage will have been done and will be irreparable.

3) We're "sticking our heads in the sand," not merely failing to do anything about the issue, but actually resisting, even fighting, to avoid doing anything about the problem.

Stupid!

Stupid!

Stupid!

Worse yet, the evidence is right there before us, staring us in the face. Consider the plights of both the dog fancy and the tropical fish hobby. Because we didn't "take care of business," we now have dogs that pass out when the door slams, grievous birth defects, and inheritable cancer; and tropical fish with bent spines, deformed gill covers, and tailess fish.

Here are some interesting links if you need more convincing.

*Deformities in Tank Raised Fish*

*Dog Deformities*



Quazgar said:


> ... Of course this doesn't change the fact that there may be no way to fully avoid inbreeding, ...


*WRONG CONCEPT!* Inbreeding is not a bad thing as long as its effects are controlled by intense selection and culling (actually, these are really just two aspects of the same principle). It happens all the time in nature, and indeed it's a very useful tool for conserving the very rare, new, beneficial changes in a population. We don't necessarily *WANT* to avoid it.

We just need to learn to be very selective in which individuals we're using as breeders, and about carefully culling out any offspring that may not be up to some basic standards before we release them into the general gene pool.



Quazgar said:


> ... but perhaps out of caution one should try to avoid breeding sac mates unless absolutely necessary to keep the species going in the hobby. I would think a somewhat more distant relative would be preferential to a known closer relative.


That's a nice thought, but in many cases it's impossible or at least impractical for all the reasons that * syndicate* mentioned in *posting #21*. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It just means that we shouldn't get our hopes too high.


Enjoy your little 7-legged, 9-eyed What-the-!@#$!-is-that?

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## salmonpink (Aug 26, 2012)

Wow this went off topic.  On another note my male p. ornata molted. How do u tell when a p ornata has matured. Sperm webs?


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## syndicate (Aug 26, 2012)

Well if inbreeding tarantulas does severely effect the captive populations in the hobby I hope somebody can go and illegally smuggle some new bloodlines out of Brazil,Africa,Mexico,India,Malaysia,Australia ect.... in a hurry before its to late!!

I think the reality of this situation is tarantulas have and are being inbred for some time now and I don't see it changing anytime soon unfortunately.I would also venture to say there are wayy more than 3.5 generations of inbred _Poecilotheria_ among other genera of tarantulas currently in the hobby!

I am in know way supporting the idea that "Hey lets all inbreed for fun!" and of course I will mate different bloodlines together whenever I have the chance but I feel like there's not to much that can be done now!A lot of the damage is done and at times there is no choice but to mate siblings.
Also someone mentioned re-introducing spiders into the wild and that will prob never happen in a million years.Nobody cares much about spiders and if a species go's extinct no government is gonna try and re-introduce arachnids.they don't exactly get the same appreciation as other animals haha!
Stan you bring up a excellent point about selective breeding and I do think this is very important.I try to practice this whenever possible and just recently a few months back I actually refused a male that was sent to me on a breeding loan.Said male had a slight deformation of its folio pattern (Could this be a result of many generations of inbreeding? D: ) and instead of using it with my females I decided I would send it back to him to avoid passing this gene on.

I also found this article googling this topic and I think it is well worth a read!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1560033/
They refer to problems resulting from inbreeding as "inbreeding depression"
 It seems that many social spiders will inbreed together.It makes me wonder if any tarantulas species who live in colonies may to?Certain _Poecilotheria_ species live together in the wild as do a couple other species of tarantulas like the chicken spiders (_Pamphobeteus_) so is it possible they mate with siblings to?I have noticed when rearing captive groups of _Poecilotheria_ together it is also not uncommon for the females to mature quicker than the males...
I however have never witnessed mating inside a colony of captive _Poecilotheria_..
Another article I found searching online regarding spiders inbreeding was about a study on a species of _Argiope_ where males have a better chance of survival post mating when courting with siblings..Pretty interesting stuff!Article can be seen here:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/spider-incest
It seems that inbreeding in spiders does in fact happen quite often in the wild and even in one case (social spiders) they have even evolved from solitary species to routinely inbreeding within a colony!
I wonder how many other species of arachnids may inbreed with each other?Also what about stuff like Parthnogenic scorpions that don't breed with any one D:
How does that effect future bloodlines when there is no mating?!
OK gonna stop rambling now....
@ Stan sorry if you felt I was attacking you with my comment..I meant no disrespect by it!
-Chris


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## Hobo (Aug 26, 2012)

salmonpink said:


> Wow this went off topic.  On another note my male p. ornata molted. How do u tell when a p ornata has matured. Sperm webs?


Bulbs at the end of the pedipalps.


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## Sharno (Aug 26, 2012)

How do you tell if a male tarantula is "stupid"?

And I am not being snarky!

I understand culling deformed or weaker ones, but I don't know how you could begin to identify subtle things. 

Do those who have dozens of Ts in their care actually know which ones are a little dim?


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## BrettG (Aug 26, 2012)

God I bet there are some buck toothed,slack jawed Holothele out there then....

Reactions: Like 2 | Funny 1


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## Stan Schultz (Aug 26, 2012)

salmonpink said:


> Wow this went off topic. ...


On the one hand, yes. And, I am deeply sorry for that.

But, on the other hand, no. You did ask, "What's that mean towards breeding."




salmonpink said:


> ... On another note my male p. ornata molted. How do u tell when a p ornata has matured. Sperm webs?


Sperm webs are a good indicator, but only if you manage to catch him "in process." Many enthusiasts have never seen their mature males' sperm webs because the males are so secretive about making and using them. Just like humans!

A much better indicator is the presence of the clubbed pedipalps and palpal bulbs. See *Do I have a mature male? (P. subfusca)*. Yes, it's a different species, but all _Poecilotheria_ are built pretty much alike from the enthusiast's point of view.

As a general rule, the presence or absence of the tibial hooks is a bit tricky because there are a whole slew of species in which the males either don't have them, or they're so diminutive that you can't see them without a magnifier or a microscope. So, it's best not to rely on them as an indicator.


Enjoy your little 8-legged super-stud!

---------- Post added 08-26-2012 at 03:37 PM ----------




syndicate said:


> Well if inbreeding tarantulas does severely effect the captive populations in the hobby I hope somebody can go and illegally smuggle some new bloodlines out of Brazil,Africa,Mexico,India,Malaysia,Australia ect.... in a hurry before its to late!! ...
> 
> ...@ Stan sorry if you felt I was attacking you with my comment..I meant no disrespect by it!
> -Chris


'Nuff said. I'm considering the topic closed unless someone else comes up with something important, relevant, and that I missed.


Enjoy your little 8-legged warmonger!

---------- Post added 08-26-2012 at 04:19 PM ----------




Sharno said:


> How do you tell if a male tarantula is "stupid"?
> 
> And I am not being snarky! ...


I was wondering if anyone was going to catch that one! Actually it really is a fair question. And, it doesn't only apply to males. Heaven forefend, but females can be stupid too!

First, you need to read and look at the photos in *Ping Pong?*. At which point your next reaction should be, "Really? So there are differences in the mental abilities of tarantulas!"

Then, you should read *"HOW THIS THING WORKS: Magic Dancers"*. And, your next reaction should then be, "Wow! So, if one is a little bit physically or mentally slow, it won't respond in time to defend itself against one that is a little faster!" It's called "survival of the fittest."



Sharno said:


> ... I understand culling deformed or weaker ones, but I don't know how you could begin to identify subtle things. ...


We really don't have to learn to recognize the subtle things. If we keep all the babies from an eggsac together in one or a few common containers for several weeks (say, until 1/4 of them had been cannibalized), the tarantulas will have done most of the job for us. Remember that in a previous post I pointed out that a survivor in nature had to be *BOTH* perfect and *INCREDIBLY LUCKY*. Thus, in nature, a bunch of each brood gets killed in spite of the fact that they're good breeding material. They just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. From our points of view, that's a waste of good money. (25% losses are always better than 99% losses!)

And so the topics of business, finance,  and profit raise their ugly heads! 



Sharno said:


> ... Do those who have dozens of Ts in their care actually know which ones are a little dim?


There are indicators. For instance, it would be my contention that those tarantulas that come to the front of the cage when I entered the room are a little brighter than the pet rock in the cage next to it. The bright bulb gets bred. The dim bulb next door gets sold! The same rule would also hold for those that seemed to enjoy handling. And, that played with their ping pong ball.


Enjoy your little 8-legged survivor!


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## Tarac (Aug 27, 2012)

syndicate said:


> I also found this article googling this topic and I think it is well worth a read!
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1560033/
> They refer to problems resulting from inbreeding as "inbreeding depression"


Did you read the paper?  It says 

"Two clear patterns emerge from our results: (i) the presence of inbreeding depression only during the solitary phases of this spider's life cycle and (ii) the predominance of extrinsic ecological and demographic factors, over intrinsic genetic factors, in determining fitness during its social phases"

This means that inbreeding didn't effect fecundity during that cycle of the spider's life.  But it did effect the spider- smaller females, etc.- as reported by the authors.  They are discussing only the social phase of this spider.

"Three hypotheses can explain the absence of inbreeding depression early in the life cycle of this spider (or near absence, depending on how the slight difference in eggsac emergence time is interpreted): (i) inbreeding effects tend to show up late in the life cycle of organisms; (ii) inbreeding effects show up late in the life cycle of this species, because low levels of inbreeding have already weeded out the most damaging deleterious recessive alleles, i.e. those with early life action (Husband & Schemske 1996); (iii) maternal care and group living provide a buffer against severe effects of inbreeding during the social phase of this spider's life cycle."

"Other observations, however, suggest that inbreeding is only partial, at best, as there is strong asynchrony in the maturation times of male and female clutchmates (Bukowski & Avilés 2002), both males and females mate multiply (Klein et al. in press), and the proportion of males in the populations drops significantly—from 0.5 to 0.28—from pre- to the post-dispersal phases, as would be expected if a fraction of the males dispersed beyond the local area without being replaced by a similar number of incoming males due to mortality of migrating males (Avilés & Gelsey 1998)."

If you read in full, this paper in no way suggests that inbreeding has no negative effects or positive effects per se, only that no signs of inbreeding depression occur during the early stages of their development.  It is, in fact, implied that there are "severe effects" of inbreeding but that the spider has basically evolved a way to cope with this naturally occurring phenomenon by taking advantage of it during early development but that it is not the strict mode of reproduction within the species, rather just one way of handling inadvertent inbreeding.

The second paper also is not really any evidence toward no effect of inbreeding on overall population health.  In this particular species, the males can only mate twice regardless of the chosen mate due to damaging palps.  What was found is simply that males who mated with females they were related to would mate for shorter amounts of time and thereby escape with their lives.  There is an easy an obvious explanation here that is actually contrary to what you might be trying to derive from this article- males who mate with related females and thereby lose one of their chances to mate with a genetically unrelated female survive to try to find a mate that is unrelated by reducing the time they are actually mating.  Males that find an unrelated female first just keep mating until she eats him.  "What is the advantage of this?" is what we need to ask.  The advantage is obvious- if you mated with your sister you will get another chance to mate with someone not in your family before your chances are done.  If you get it right the first time and find someone not in your family then there is no need to use that second chance, rather better to stick around and make sure you really got the deed done.  Then it is fine to self-sacrifice for the benefit of your genetically more diverse offspring.  The summary says:

"This finding of inbreeding avoidance in males intrigues Trine Bilde of Aarhus University in Denmark, who has studied the female side of inbreeding in spiders. It’s another twist in the tale of cannibals, which have proved quite informative to biologists. “It is interesting to study sexually cannibalistic species to understand how evolution can possibly favor self-sacrificing males,” she says."

That statement in itself implies that the self-sacrificing males, or in this study those which mate with non-related females- are favored.  Read carefully in full.

---------- Post added 08-27-2012 at 08:07 AM ----------




Pikaia said:


> Enjoy your little 7-legged, 9-eyed What-the-!@#$!-is-that?


Lol.  Does it play the banjo eerily well?


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## Thistles (Aug 28, 2012)

Sharno said:


> How do you tell if a male tarantula is "stupid"?


 I have one that attacks the vent in his cage every time I try to feed him. The cricket will walk right by and he persists in attacking the vent. Sometimes he'll even walk away from the vent for a while, then when the cricket makes a motion he runs right back up to the vent. Needless to say, my OTHER male gets first dibs on my 2 ladies.

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## salmonpink (Aug 31, 2012)

Ok so clearly I won't be breeding them. Manly cause my male is bigger then my female but he will likely mature at his next molt so I will likely trade him off or sell so someone can use him for what he is supposed to do. The question is what should I expect in a trade or cash.


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## Tarac (Aug 31, 2012)

salmonpink said:


> Ok so clearly I won't be breeding them. Manly cause my male is bigger then my female but he will likely mature at his next molt so I will likely trade him off or sell so someone can use him for what he is supposed to do. The question is what should I expect in a trade or cash.


In a trade it would be a 50/50 generally of any resulting slings.  Use the search, lots of discussion of what the "standard" 50/50 implies.  Advice is to ensure you have the details hashed out in advance- who pays for return shipping/forwarding on, evidence of death, etc.  Suggest using someone reputable that has references but it's up to you.  Everyone has to start somewhere after all.  This was all discussed ad nauseam just recently, use the search so you know what to expect and what you need to discuss with any potential trading partners in advance.

For cash, again use the search.  Advanced search the classifieds and invertsonals.  No clue what the market price is a for a MM ornata.  MM are usually not terribly valuable by themselves but who knows what demand will be like at the time he matures.


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## Stan Schultz (Aug 31, 2012)

salmonpink said:


> Ok so clearly I won't be breeding them. Manly cause my male is bigger then my female but he will likely mature at his next molt so I will likely trade him off or sell so someone can use him for what he is supposed to do. The question is what should I expect in a trade or cash.


There is no "official" or legally mandated set of guidelines. Everything is up for negotiation.

However, when loaning a male for breeding, it is *customary* in the hobby for the two enthusiasts to share any resulting offspring 50/50. But, if one tarantula eats the other they just shrug and move on with their lives with no one getting anything. If the mating simply is unsuccessful, the male may be returned to the original owner if still alive, and both participants just move on. Even if the mating is successful, very often the male is returned to the original owner possibly for loaning to someone else. The male's owner stands to ultimately make more money, but takes a greater risk.

However, "money talks, *b*@#$*s*@#$ walks," and some enthusiasts prefer a guaranteed cash settlement up front. In this case the female's owner merely buys the male outright. The male's owner usually gets the short straw in this case, but is absolutely guaranteed some compensation. The female's owner takes all the risk, but stands to make a much larger score if successful. Less risk, smaller return. More risk, larger return. Simple.

And, there are sometimes rather complicated business deals negotiated. For instance, what is the male's owner going to do with 500 baby _B. smithi_? Instead, since the female's owner is already going to have to dispose of their share (500 babies), often a deal is made whereby the female's owner sells the entire brood (except perhaps a very few for personal pets) to a dealer. The male's owner gets half the proceeds in cash plus a few babies previously agreed upon.

But sometimes in order to make the deal a little more fair, some major expenses like gas money or air freight (if a long trip is involved), are deducted from the proceeds first.

Or, since dealers often prefer to work on a barter/trade basis, there may be some very complex negotiations between all three parties (i.e., the dealer, the female's owner, the male's owner) with little or no cash transfer at all.

Also, it is *customary* in the pet industry (and business in general) for the recipient of a shipment to always pay the shipping expenses. Often, the shipper merely adds a little amount to the bill, the classic "shipping and handling." Or, if the shipping costs are relatively small, the shipper may merely absorb them as part of the "cost of doing business," and forget it. But, a common mistake among laymen is to fail to appreciate the costs of shipping in advance and deal with them as part of any negotiation. Sending a shipment via air freight, for instance, seldom costs less than $100! Often more. Sometimes much more! So obviously, shipping 6 baby _B. smithi_ by air freight would be silly! *ALWAYS* discuss shipping and handling and come to a firm agreement on the subject before finalizing a business deal!

Lastly, I once worked for a real estate management firm that was negotiating the sale of a condominium complex in Tuscon. The agreement among the several business partners that were considering the sale was that the proceeds would be divided according to some complex formula *AFTER DEDUCTING EXPENSES*. One of the partners flew his family to Tuscon for a 3 week vacation and tried to claim the full $25,000 expense against the sale as a business trip to inspect the property and negotiate with the buyers face to face. And, that's when the fight started. They did settle out of court, but the lawyers' fees were something in the neighborhood of ... are you ready for this? ... $25,000! (Note that, regardless of the outcome, the lawyers are the only ones who *ALWAYS* win!)

The agreement should have read, "... after deducting the following expenses, if present ..." and appending a specific list.

My recommendation is a 50/50 split with the shipper paying the first $10 for shipping and handling, and the recipient paying anything over that (applicable to both a round trip for the male and for the potential shipping of any babies back to you). You assume the responsibility for disposing of your share of the babies.


Enjoy your little, high finance, 8-legged Wunderspinne!


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## advan (Aug 31, 2012)

Tarac said:


> Lol.  Does it play the banjo eerily well?


A few of us like banjo music. ;P Clicky I don't see where the OP mentioned a breeding loan. Just for trade or sale. 

Another inbreeding thread with some interesting replies. Also, make sure to follow the link to the UK board. Clicky

Reactions: Like 1


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## Jaromysfuneral (Jan 30, 2022)

I personally wouldn’t breed if I knew any tarantula was within 5 generations. What I will do is wait to breed a tarantula until it’s been adult for long enough that it’s sibling males should have died by then, or if I have an adult that I don’t know the age I can usually assume male siblings have decease. theoretically that can happen after a t is adult size and molts one more time without gaining size, to which I’ll then start shopping around preferably with out of state keepers as to increase odds of them not being as close in blood lines. I have purchased slings from individuals that have had poorer success rates that also bred siblings together so it left a bad taste in my mouth, while breeding in my method I’ve had phenomenal success rates like 1600+ babies and only 20ish dying from an LP. Anything you can do to breed two healthy unrelated spiders will increase your chances of healthy spiders, while those who take the risks also risk their reputation


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## jrh3 (Jan 30, 2022)

Jaromysfuneral said:


> I personally wouldn’t breed if I knew any tarantula was within 5 generations. What I will do is wait to breed a tarantula until it’s been adult for long enough that it’s sibling males should have died by then, or if I have an adult that I don’t know the age I can usually assume male siblings have decease. theoretically that can happen after a t is adult size and molts one more time without gaining size, to which I’ll then start shopping around preferably with out of state keepers as to increase odds of them not being as close in blood lines. I have purchased slings from individuals that have had poorer success rates that also bred siblings together so it left a bad taste in my mouth, while breeding in my method I’ve had phenomenal success rates like 1600+ babies and only 20ish dying from an LP. Anything you can do to breed two healthy unrelated spiders will increase your chances of healthy spiders, while those who take the risks also risk their reputation


Do you realize this thread is 10 years old?


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## advan (Jan 31, 2022)

Jaromysfuneral said:


> I personally wouldn’t breed if I knew any tarantula was within 5 generations. What I will do is wait to breed a tarantula until it’s been adult for long enough that it’s sibling males should have died by then, or if I have an adult that I don’t know the age I can usually assume male siblings have decease. theoretically that can happen after a t is adult size and molts one more time without gaining size, to which I’ll then start shopping around preferably with out of state keepers as to increase odds of them not being as close in blood lines. I have purchased slings from individuals that have had poorer success rates that also bred siblings together so it left a bad taste in my mouth, while breeding in my method I’ve had phenomenal success rates like 1600+ babies and only 20ish dying from an LP. Anything you can do to breed two healthy unrelated spiders will increase your chances of healthy spiders, while those who take the risks also risk their reputation


All species from a closed country, like Brazil, that are in the hobby  are related via inbreeding, including your LPs.

Reactions: Agree 1


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