Hybrids of Avicularia sp.amazonica Manaus and sp.Peru Purple, with photos

[Koshkin]

Hi to all,
Avicularia sp.Amazonica Manaus was hybridised with Av. sp. Peru Purple in 2012, Germany.
Purpose of this thread is to warn european keepers and to show all, how the hybrids look like.

I bought 15 slings from Hamm in March 2012. They looked exactly like slings of real amazonica (whitish color on legs instead of orange). Reaching size of 3,5-4 cm bodylengh they still looked like a real deal, with bright red pattern on abdomen. But few of them began to show some violet. Through next few molts red color on abdomen became darker and darker, so that now it is almost black with pink hair.
At all, these hybrids look very similar to Peru Purple. But they have more bright blue color on sides of carapace and leg femurs.
Also they have pink toes only in subadult size, with very little or NO pink toes when adult. Mine lost them when reached legspan of 15-16 cm.
Their hair is more whitish than peru purple has, but less than amazonica.
They have no red on abdomen.
Finally, all of them look very different from real amazonica manaus side to side. If you bought smth similar under this name, please keep it away from breeding. Here are more photos:

Also it will be big help if arachnokeepers will bring my post to other forums.

 

[viper69]

If this is true, the person who made the hybrids is nothing but genetic garbage.

Where did you hear or learn of this information??

It's very hard to take a picture of an animal with built-in iridescence and have it look the same with each frame especially at different angles. I'm not saying your info is wrong, but looking at pics of my own Avics, in some cases the same animal will look like a different individual, even with the same digital camera and same lighting. I know because I have done this.

If one presents images of Ts that they took themselves, it would be helpful to have the images' meta-data, to determine how different the photographic conditions were.

 

[Koshkin]

I'm not saying your info is wrong, but looking at pics of my own Avics, in some cases the same animal will look like a different individual, even with the same digital camera and same lighting. I know because I have done this.

I absolutely agree that avics can look very versatile in color, but in this case I'm not judging by smb's photos - I described my own story and all tarantulas on the photos are mine. I also have sp. Peru Purple and amazonica Manaus(from another breeding) and I compare all three side by side attentively. These ones are 100% hybrids.
Of course, shots from comparison picture were made in different conditions, but both tarantulas on them look highly realistic.

 

[viper69]

If you have pure amazonica, then a comparison of the Ts on the same background taken at the SAME time would be more helpful than looking at individual photos.

Photos with hybrid, pure amazon., and sp Peru Purple in one frame. That's the best comparison.

As you know, it's a really hard to figure out via pictures.

 

[jrh3]

we have hybrids in the panther chameleon community, but isnt too bad because WC pure locales are not too hard to obtain for line breeding. although i do think each species should be pure, in the wild chameleon locales do cross breed and form hybrids due to being close in location. as for Tarantulas if said species are close location there is the possibility of hybridization so what nature produces can not be genetic garbage. That being said im still new to the locales of Avicularia species.

 

[Koshkin]

viper69, Unfortunately that will be rather complicated for me - I have time only for quickshots. By the way, info that I write here is enough to recognise hybrid without any photos.

And some new info, to keep thread alive. In 2013-2015 in Europe began to appear strange amazonicas which are blue, but have black abdomen, similar to peru purple. Some have red pattern in subadult size but loose it with L12 or it becomes dark and blured. Also they have bright pink toes. They are results of mating hybrid amazonicas to true ones. The picture shows one such female L11, spiderlings came from Czech Republic.
Also I know a person who bought amazonicas from 3 different sellers in Germany, and only from one of sellers they grew to true ones. The other spiders were hybrids, from one breeding - extremely similar to peru purple, so it is also under risk. I saw all of them myself.

 

[viper69]

viper69, Unfortunately that will be rather complicated for me - I have time only for quickshots. By the way, info that I write here is enough to recognise hybrid without any photos.

And some new info, to keep thread alive. In 2013-2015 in Europe began to appear strange amazonicas which are blue, but have black abdomen, similar to peru purple. Some have red pattern in subadult size but loose it with L12 or it becomes dark and blured. Also they have bright pink toes. They are results of mating hybrid amazonicas to true ones. The picture shows one such female L11, spiderlings came from Czech Republic.
Also I know a person who bought amazonicas from 3 different sellers in Germany, and only from one of sellers they grew to true ones. The other spiders were hybrids, from one breeding - extremely similar to peru purple, so it is also under risk. I saw all of them myself.

Interesting, see if you can find out who the 3 Germany sellers are.

 

[Haksilence]

all good info, thanks for the heads up. its a shame you wound up with unbreadable stock, but at the very least they are pretty specimens.

 

[Storm76]

If this would be true (which right now I'm doubting due to the lack of proof and only one person I don't know basing this on coloration of slings/adults) then my A. sp. "amazonica" would be a hybrid.

My female:

The above female as sling:

This was the male:

However, the breeder I acquired them from here bred them himself and is certainly not hybridizing any species. 98% of my collection are from him (including most of my Avicularia spp.) and I never once had a problem or was sent a questionable specimen. Because of this, I'm wondering on what you are basing your "discovery" exactly? What breeders are we talking about here and where did you obtain the information about these species having hybridized? Or did you conclude this yourself?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're wrong - I just don't think you're considering all the facts. For instance: To be able to judge all of this objectively, you'd have to know and seen the 1st ever of both species imported into the hobby and know the persons who did bring them into it.

Example male of A. sp. "Purple Peru" (looks distinctively different from my sp. "amazonica", doesn't it?)
CLICKY

Example female of A. sp. "Purple Peru" (again, distinctively different from sp. "amazonica"...)
CLICKY


So, for further clarification, please give us some more proof of this other thand hear-say or own opinion, please? Besides, both of these have not yet been described scientifically which makes "IDying" either somewhat hard, too. There are always slight variations in coloration, moreso in Avicularias. Best example are versicolor that display various shades of orange, red, blue, purple. Those aren't hybrids either.

 

[Koshkin]

Hi Storm76,
Your female amazonica looks exactly the same like one from my last post. I'm sure that one of her parents or grandparents was hybrid. Later I will post pictures of more females and matured male from Czech breeding.
Your male looks true to me, but what is sad, 4 males of my purple hybrids changed their color to dark blue when matured. It seems that even experienced breeders could receive such males in past and didn't recognise them as hybrids.

Well, I have info to approve my point of view.

First, I don't have much experience with amazonica, but a person, who showed me hybrids and true one, had females many years ago, when peru purple wasn't in the hobby(or just started to be imported). When I began to doubt about my specimens, we spoke about it few times and his words always were NO, amazonica has no such variety, no violet color and always has red pattern appearing from semi-adult age. Now he has absolutely no doubt that the species was hybridised. Another my hobbymate also had true amazonica in same old times. When I showed them my semi-adult amazonicas, both said that mine look nothing like true one.

Second, can it be variability? - absolutely noway. Everyone can look through old posts written by scientists who saw and kept amazonicas from first imports. For example on another forum there is rather informative thread where Ray Gabriel explains that amazonica has unique appearance and how to tell it apart from peru purple. And if amazonica had great variability in color, he would anyway mention it and didn't write that it has such big difference from peru purple.

Third, basing on my experience with avics, they have local forms with noticable differences. But inside locations they have rather stable appearance. For example, purpurea and sp. Ecuador are likely to be 2 forms of one ecuadorian species, but from offspring of sp Ecuador we don't get any purpureas. I bred 2 wild caught peru purple females and rised slings to adult size, from few hundred that I kept for collection I noticed no strange specimens. The same thing with Av. aurantiaca. Because peru purple are collected from big area, they often are a little bit different in color, so can their offspring be. But it will be only slight variety between gradations of purple, not purple to blue, brown and green.

To summarize all, it's impossible that till some time amazonica kept stable appearance, and then suddenly began to show huge variability of features. It was just crossbreeded with peru purple male, labeled by somebody as amazonica.

If it's necessary I can name breeder, from whom I bought slings. I saw his advertisement on terraristik, with photo of female. I remember, that she looked like a real deal, and what was the male - that's mystery. When I asked if this is amazonica Manaus breeding, he answered that yes, of course. I don't know much about breeder, but as i got to know he was rather experienced, not newcomer. And I also got info that he died in 2014. That's the reason why I'm careful with names and didn't still ask him about these avics. I'm sure he did it by mistake, but male seems to be peru purple.

The other people selling hybrids were all from terraristik and are likely to be just sellers, not breeders of more hybrids. Unfortunately, my friend didn't remember their names, he says that will be rather difficult to find it out from lots of messages on his email.

 

[Storm76]

Interesting, except that you said the male looks legit - because that male was the brother of my female from the very same sac. The male that produced that sac with the breeders female looked exactly like the one I had mature out. I put that pic up for two reasons:

#1 A. sp. "amazonica" (Manaus) does have yellow leg-banding from sling onward already (which can be seen on the female even as sling) and to my knowledge the deep red abdominal satae are also a trademark, along with the white tipped satae all over

#2 A. sp. "Peru Purple" lacks this leg-banding completely and is of a very dark blueish/purplish coloration and display usually a very dark, deep blueish/purple (can't really decide which of both, looks to me always like a mixture between them) coloration and lacks white-tipped satae

Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, but you admitted it yourself that what you're basing all this upon is the word of one other person that supposedly found out they were hybridized, told you and explained his conclusion to you based on his assumptions / observations.

The main problem with all of this is that the genus itself is so totally messed up, that when supposedly new species get imported, the importers just slap a name on them to make them interesting and voila. Is it possible these were hybridized? Sure, but without having scientifically backed up proof of how each of those spp. really looks (currently it is only breeders/hobbyists and importers!) - it's somewhat of a guessing game and ultimately until such time, will hurt both species in the trade.

As a sidenote: Every single specimen of sp. "amazonica" (Manaus) I've seen, looks exactly like the female I raised and still own. The one in your picture looks nothing like either species to me frankly, perhaps due to the lighting differences in the comparison pics, but I doubt it. Both of these have been the subject of discussion for a long time and people have a hard time to see the differences. If you go through the BTS forums, you'll find a some interesting stuff on them as well.

One request by the way: Could you please link us the thread with Ray speaking about them? I'd really like to know what's true and will lay off on breeding my female hence for the time being. And perhaps you could send me the breeders name you're talking about as a PM? Thanks!

 

[Koshkin]

Storm76, I understood that your male is female's brother. But if I cannot notice smth wrong in him, the female has smth that looks strange to me, like pattern on abdomen practically disappeared. The female I posted hasn't any pattern, and one of her sisters had it, but lost it with L12. The second one still has it in L12 and is very close to pure amazonica. Features slightly differ between all 3 sisters.

Here is the old thread about amazonica/peru purple differences - http://www.the-t-store.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=9870&st=0

By the way, I have strong opinion that sometimes in hobby we must forget about science. For example, we have 2 absolutely different looking tarantulas from different countries or regions. That is enough to keep them away from crossbreeding without any scientific knowledge. Don't matter if they are color forms or different species, are they described or not. Noboby mates Euathlus pulcherrimaklaasi blue to it's green form, for example. If some scientist will prove, that Av. bicegoi, peru purple and aurantiaca are local forms of urticans, do that seem that they can be bred all together? Noway, of course.

What is also important - I don't base my opinion on words of other people. I describe what I see with my own eyes. And I have seen pure amazonica, pure peru purple and bought as amazonica strange avics that have features of both of them. Knowing that both species are sold as amazonica makes picture complete. Info from other people is just a help for me that proves my opinion. Of course, I haven't photo/video evidences of hybridising these 2 species, and haven't seen anybody doing that, but who shows such things to public?

I sent you a PM with some info.

 

[Storm76]

So, I just read through the thread you linked and especially Rays answers...

Quote from him there: "The main Key feature (for adults) though is the abdomen, it it has short red hairs with looser longer hairs over the top it is the real thing, if it has short black hairs with long pinky hairs over it then you have ther Peruvian Purple sp."

Right underneath that statement, there's a guy posting his A. sp. "amazonica" asking if it would be the right one, to which Ray responds: "Looks like the real jobby to me[...]"

Now, that spider looks exactly like my girl while she was growing up, she simply lost that pattern over time and after the molt before last, she turned that red patch into black with only the sides with red (not pink!) satae. I'll see if I can snap an actual pic of her since I rehoused the girl a week ago. I think I'm gonna reach out to a few and see what turns up, I'd like to know what I have in my cage here and if / if not I can breed her in the future.

Also, no offense, but to me it read like oyu heard from a friend about this, then investigated your own spiders and came to same conclusion.