Inbreeding?

[angelarachnid]

Sorry i ahve not been able to reply for a while, been in Germany.

Thoth, i agree with you 100%.

WHY are we discussing inbreeding in VERTIBRATES

But if you want to go down that line: Arabian Oryx, black footed Ferret, Hawian goose, , Prezewalskis horse, Round Island Boa, Angolan Python

These are just some of the endangered species which are being bred in captivity from very small populations.

Any of the insular Epicrates and Tropidophus species, Galapagos Marine Iguana (in fact almost anything from the Galapagos). Sumatran Rinocerus the list goes on and on,

Think of any animal which is found on small islands and has no way (like Birds, Actualy you can nclude many of the rail species as these are flightless) of breeding with unrelated specimens then these HAVE TO BE inbred, and we are not just talking the past couple of years since they were first discovred, we are talking the thousands of years these species have been stick on the islands since either the islands were formed or the species became a species its own right.

Back to inverts.

Last year Richard Gallon described a species of spider found on a very small island, cannot remember the name, this species has to be inbred, there is now way (and no other place where this species has been found) this species can breed outside the population on the island.

Now think of the populations of Avic versicolour, all found on islands which are not very big, P. cambridgei an island species whose nearewst relative is P. irminia.

Look at all the species of Cyrtopholis found on Cuba, some of which come from very small areas,

There is already inbreeding in wild populations, where ever geographical barriers isolate populations of any species.

And remember inbreeding is not just the 30 years or so a species might have been kept in captivity, its all the thousands of years they have been living in these isolated populations.

Now then no one yet has posted any links to the scientific proof that inbreeding occurs in theraphosid spiders, so lets widen the range any inverts?

Ray

 

[edesign]

so Ray...in your rush to write an essay you seem to have ignored my previous question. Why does it matter if we're discussing inverts or verts?

 

[angelarachnid]

edesign

Speaking to a friend tommorow with a biology degree got a reply for you soon

Just spotted this

>Also, the ALL L. parahybana have come from 3 females or whatever... I <could prove you wrong 30 times over,

REALLY so when did you speak to the guy who imported them???

Because when we were discussing inbreeding he told me that he only had 3 eggsacs ever sent to him ???


Ray

 

[angelarachnid]

KNEW there was something else

Any one seen the latest BTS Journal????

Very Nice article on inbreeding in P. murinus in the latest edition

Ray

 

[TheDarkFinder]

angelarachind,
I was going to let this topic drop, but i'm just can not.

I understand you situtation. IF you are right then why should you not inbreed for profit. You made money off what you did, and rightfully so.

ANYONE THAT TALKS ABOUT WILD POPULATIONS AND CAPTIVE INBREEDING DOES NOT UNDERSTAND GENETICS.

I'm not going to spend a huge amount of time on this.

SO
--------------------------------------------------------------
First thing, for those tha like to pull in family lines, where egypt, english, or spain needs to check there facts. They showed extreme inbreeding problems. I will add roman in to the list.
This showed up in ears, facial probels, ie cliffed lip, and other probems,
There are some "who's the daddy?" questions.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Back to wild populations vs captive bred populations.

Without the blow by blow explation, you can get that from any biology book, I will give a quick idea of what is wrong here.

1.) Any time that two individuals mate there is a huge list of what can happen.
2.) Each of the offspring will contain the different alleles.

Lets just say molting problems for a minute.

lets us say that it is one allele for this trait, Allele A.

If the speices contians Allele A then they will never have a molting problem.
But there is Allele a. Allele a is a recessive. This recessive trait uses less moisture then Allele A. This reduction in moisture makes it so that the tarantulas does lose so much mass during a molt. Allele A makes it so the tarantula can molt no matter what happens. Allele a makes it so the tarantulas recovers quicker, grower faster, and but can not molt during dry periods.

We now take the 3 different types of alleles in a population.

AA is a tarantula that has lived in dryier areas, and learned to survive.
Aa is a tarantula that lives at the border of the area of wet and dry, and survive droughts.
aa is a tarantula that lives in the wet areas.
All of the above are the same species. Different living conditions but the same species.

During the dryier years the AA survive. During the wetter years the tarantula with aa quickly overtake the tarantulas with AA.

Since our systems, fake but an example, goes through change from year to year. The dryier alleles keep the wetter alleles going.

Let us do some thinking on breeding these two.

First off let us look at AA mating with Aa

A a
A AA| Aa
A AA| Aa

When you mate AA with Aa you get the whole population that will never grow fast or breed big, but will surive during huge droughts.

Now with AA and aa

A a
A AA | Aa
a Aa | aa

With this model we have a equal spread of Alleles. 3/4 will surivive a drought.

In the wild aa is limiting. The drought kills off all of the aa's. Only leaving AA or Aa that will survive.

This is evolution.

Now let me change what the alleles stand for. AA is big tarantulas, over 8". aa is a tarantula under 6".

Select two members at random. Aa and aa.
we now have this.

A a
A Aa Aa
a Aa aa

3/4 of the population will be over 8" and 1/4 will be under 6."

In captive bred populations there is no limiting factors. So everyone lives to breed.
As long as there is a AA or Aa we will have tarantulas over 8".

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Now let us look at something less known. Lets say that there is a genetic problem in a tarantulas that breaks down an chemical receptors that are used for molting, allele aa. This happens over time. It is something we do not what in our tarantula right?

With straight outbreeding we have no problems the aa allele is keep to very low levels.

limiting factors keep this out of our wild populations. If the break down happens after the 11 molt the tarantula will reproduce but not as often as an AA.

If the wild the death of all aa makes sure they do not take over. Since there will always be individuals with Aa, we can never get rid of it.

So you take a wild population eggsack. You get 1/4 of the eggsack that have AA. 1/2 of the eggsack will have Aa. 1/4 will have aa.

you select two at random and since you have a bigger change selecting two aa you get this

a a
a aa aa
a aa aa

All of your individuals will die at molt 11.
The more you inbreed the more you induce these factors in to your breeding programs.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Genetics is not this simple. Many factors are involved in this.

If you keep outbreeding you make sure that bad traits are reduce to background levels.

In wild populations, you limit bad alleles out of the gentics. If an allele does not support the surivival and another one does, then the one that does will breed and the one that does not will not breed. Those that are too slow, too small, too big, too weak do not survive.

If you inbreed you are just limiting survival genes and you keep non survival genes in the population, at a higher ratio. aa is not limited.

If your two first tarnatulas where aa allele tarantulas then you do not stand a chance. If your first two tarantulas contained Aa or AA alleles you are fine. Unless your next breeding is aa then you are screwed. But if you mate a aa offspring with a AA offspring then you just made it possible to survive.

If you are right then nothing will happen.

IF tarantulas are like any living population, and you do not outbreed, there will be problems.

I'M NOT GOING TO THIS THREAD SO DO NOT BOTHER.

Please do talk to your biology friend.
thedarkfinder
I wrote this quickly and do not care about grammar or problems with it.

PS I have posted a paper on inbreeding and spiders. It is a good read.

 

[Jesse607]

Just curious:

What if all the "bad" traits have been bred out of a population, or never existed within a population. I realize that the more genetically diverse a population is the more likely it is to adapt/survive a new selection force, but does that necessarily mean that all wild populations are genetically diverse? What if an isolated population has very little if any genotypic variation among individuals, and the genotype is conserved as a result of frequent inbreeding? Can anyone say for sure that none of this is possible, or does not occur in any group of organisms including tarantulas? Just wondering.

 

[Swindinian]

This topic is winding me up - but hopefully in a good way. Thanks for your contributions - hopefully we can all gain something from this.

My replies to Thoth:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Swindinian
Question:Would it be logical to assume that the greater the genetic diversity of a population, the more deleterious alleles could be present?

Yes, but the frequency of it occurring would very low..

Fair point, though it depends on the genetic stock you're starting with - I was leading on to something

Quote:
Originally Posted by Swindinian
question: is it safe to assume genetic divergence is equally proportional to morphological changes?

Yes and No, genotypic differences may or not lead to phenotypic differences. Look at dogs and wolves. You have different breeds of dogs which are genetically identical but morphologically very dissimiliar (daschund vs. greyhound) or you have a wolf and dog genetically different enough to be seperate species but some breeds of dog look very much like wolves. Or if you want an invertebrate example there are species of beetles which can only be differentiated by there sex organs. Then again several closely related organisms look quite different.

That's kinda what I was thinking. i.e. A group of spiders may be categorised as one species owing to the fact that they look morphologically the same, but their DNA might reveal a significant divergence, that we would otherwise be ignorant to when counting on morphology alone as our key to classification of species.

Should we not acknowledge that our classification system may have limitations/be flawed and take account of this when making decisions about how we conduct captive breeding?

I often hear people say they disapprove of crossing different colour forms of the same species (me being one of them) ie G. rosea. Also P. murinus is a good example - typical colour forms with red colour forms. There's also intergrade and maybe a dark form?

However, this is merely one single phenotypical characteristic - it doesn't necessarily correspond to genetic relatedness - I wonder whether we should stop focussing on singluar phenotypic features and start focussing on breeding spiders from related populations/regions - a more reliable method of gauging a spider's relatedness.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Swindinian
I would guess that the more complicated an organism is, the more chromosomes it should have.

Not true.
Not true.

:worship:
Evidently, I misconstrued the meaning of chromosome. The chromosomes are how the DNA is arranged, and not an indication of the volume of DNA or genes present (it was approaching ten years ago that I did a module of genetics at college :? )
This comment was triggered by previous comments regarding vertebrate case studies as irrelevant (hey Ray ). Because vertebrates have more complex systems (it may follow that the genetic rules are more complicated ie one gene coding for the synthesis of more than one protein etc), perhaps they could be seen to be unhelpfully complicated for extrapolating what happens with the less complex genetics of inverts:?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Swindinian
Does it hold true that the less complicated the organism, the less complex the interaction is between the various alleles and various genes.

No, it is suprisingly similiar among all eukaryotes.

I was under the impression that there was a qualititive difference in how genes function and interact, and thought this might relate to how evolved the organism was. But it's not clear in my mind :?
"Organism complexity" and "how evolved an organism is" - aren't the same thing. Whatever the case, I am sufficiently ignorant on this so I would benefit from some further study and stop sidetracking us.

Outbreeding depression is possible if it introduces an unfavorable trait to a healthy inbred population, could potential devestate it.

I do agree, but I was also leaning towards the idea that we could create an unhealthy captive population by mixing the gene pool of different wild populations that would not naturally interact this way in the wild.

Looking ahead of our last posts, I think TheDarkFinder articulates his point more fluidly than mine.:clap:

One additional related issue I recall is "gene migration". How stable are genes along the chromosome? If we had a situation where in one population, one or more genes migrated along the chromosome, then when we crossed this with a different population, what would be the result?
Would the offspring be viable at all?

More alarmingly, if they were, how would this impact on our captive populations of spiders?

Creating new and diverse combinations of genes might be great for the interactions of evolution and natural selection of a species, but could be tragic with the limitations of a captive population!

 

[TheDarkFinder]

No, and here is why.

There is no such thing as a bad trait. There is traits the will affect survival, but no bad ones. Things like disease, cancer, and baldness is caused a an mutation. This mutation was happened in the gametes and therefor passed to the organism. Mutations and cross over mixing of the chroisomes makes a different in what will happen.

The second thing to remember is that my example never happens in the wild or captive. It is an example and only an example. I reality it is many alleles that show a change. Let me explain.

This is going to be hard explain, but I will try

Genes are never simply expressed, they are controled.
There may be 100 genes that affect the color of the tarantulas.

1 gene says color blue. Another gene turns off that gene when it tries to be expressed in carapace.

Another gene turns on the blue gene, but limits the amount of expression. So the legs of the tarantula shade from bright blue to dark blue.

Another gene turns off the gene if a chemical receptor is activated. The chemical receptor unblocks the gene suppressor, the gene makes a suppressor that attaches to the blue gene.

The blue gene can no longer express blue. This is the idea behind the male going from blue to brown at maturity. The maturity gene creates a color gene suppressor.

There may be hundred genes behind the maturity gene. Each on needs to be on inorder to be expressed.

As you can see you could never get rid of the bad trait because they may use the same genes.

This is why genes can go dormant. You grampa my be short, your mother, father, brother, sister, aunt and uncle may be tall. But you got the right express/suppress genes so you are short.

This is the problem with inbreeding, you increase the chance that you get one gene that will suppress a needed gene. And since it is one gene if you can not undo the suppressed gene until you outbreed.
thedarkfinder.

 

[Brian S]

angelarachind,
ANYONE THAT TALKS ABOUT WILD POPULATIONS AND CAPTIVE INBREEDING DOES NOT UNDERSTAND GENETICS.

Yeah well maybe so but how do you or anyone else know that it doesnt happen in wild populations?

 

[TheDarkFinder]

Yeah well maybe so but how do you or anyone else know that it doesnt happen in wild populations?

It does but the effect of it is limited by outbreeding.
I dropped a paper on this subject in arachnid forum.

In that paper it showed the inbreeding depression effected only the size and growth of the species. Not life span, eggsack size or surivvablity.

I can not tell you if it is benifical to grow quicker or bigger in their enivorment but it seem to make sense.

Take a read of it. It is not tarantulass but since it inbreeding depression has been seen in all branchs of life it is understood that it happens here. Inbreeding is one way to make a new species. But there is always a way to limit the expression of unwanted genes.

In captivity there is no way to limit the bad genes. We keep the tarantulas in pretty nice enviroments.

I will start the discussion of the paper tomorrow. I hope you and everyone will join.

http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?t=62997

thedarkfinder

 

[angelarachnid]

Ok where do i start,

Edsign I have an answer for you but firstly my friend told me to sugest to you to read Richard Dawkings, The Selfish Gene and then The Ancestors Tale,

But since i doupt if you will do that, here is a very brief explanation,

Inverts are much more older in evolution then vertibrates, in this longer time of evolution, they have become more specialised and many of the inbreeding problems found in less evolutinary advanced species such as vertibrates but which are more complex have not been reduced.

Being more complex animals vertibrates (sorry i should say higher vertibrates, as there is evedance that inbreeding is not a problem with the lower vertibrates) have more that can go wrong with them.

Inverts being around for a longer period of time have evolved Parthanogenises, where only one sex is required to produce young.

So answer if you can where is inbreeding a problem with parthanogenetic species?

And if you can referance ANY scientific papers which prove inbreeding with Parthanogenetic species of invert and Theraphosid spiders.

Dark finder

>ANYONE THAT TALKS ABOUT WILD POPULATIONS AND CAPTIVE INBREEDING >DOES NOT UNDERSTAND GENETICS.

With a statement like that you havent got a clue neither, Have you ever been out in the field and stood in the middle of a spider colony? have you ever found a family group of Poecilotheria?

>>PS I have posted a paper on inbreeding and spiders. It is a good read.

you wrote a paper on inbreeding in theraphosid spiders, ok where is it published, what are your referances, what research did you do, what species did you breed and for how many generations, what population dendsity is required to prevent inbreeding?

Now i HAVE done some genitic work on theraphosid spiders (yep you guessed a future BTS journal) explaining Punnet Squares, Heterozygus specimens, simple dominant and recesive genes etc.

Also for the past few years i have been working on 2 pattern strains of Corn Snakes, Amelanistic with a broad wide stripe and Anerythristic Zig Zags, and i dont mean 2-3 saddles joined in astraight line i am talking about a sharp zig zag pattern all the way down the body, the only way to purify these strains is to inbreed. and so far no inbreeding problems.

So you think that inbreeding problems will manifest themselves in the F2 generation of inbred species?

Well i have 4th generation inbred regalis who have no problems, in the latest BTS journal there is an article on 4th generation inbred P. murinus.

You said

>>In that paper it showed the inbreeding depression effected only the size >>and growth of the species.

3rd Generation inbred male regalis almost 20cm leg dia matured in less than one year fathered 1140 young (previous BTS journal)

>>Take a read of it. It is not tarantulass but since it inbreeding depression >>has been seen in all branchs of life it is understood that it happens here. >>Inbreeding is one way to make a new species.

How can you say inbreeding occurs in Theraphosids if your paper is not ON theraphosids.

Parthanogenetic species such as sticks, a branch of life where is the inbreeding?


>>Select two members at random. Aa and aa.
>>we now have this.

>>A a
>>A Aa Aa
>>a Aa aa

>>3/4 of the population will be over 8" and 1/4 will be under 6."

>>In captive bred populations there is no limiting factors. So everyone lives >>to breed.
>>As long as there is a AA or Aa we will have tarantulas over 8".

You really have alot to learn about genetics if you think genetics controlls size, there used to be some one in Engalnd who used to belive this, sold so called genetic giant spiders which had to be fed very well to attain maximum size.

If this was an example then you chose an example which was not very good.

>>Yeah well maybe so but how do you or anyone else know that it doesnt >>happen in wild populations?

Good Point Brian, Frylock what is the name of that species Gallon described from that small island of round island? the only place in the world it has ever been found on, where is the population density and genetic spread for this species????????

Darkfinder

>>This is why genes can go dormant. You grampa my be short, your mother, >>father, brother, sister, aunt and uncle may be tall. But you got the right >>express/suppress genes so you are short.

Very interesting this shows that either the mother was related to the father both being heterozygus for shortness which did not cary onto the brother sister, the aunt and uncle would not be related by blood (well i hope not) or at the extreme the unrelated mother also carried the gene for shortness so also heterozygus

Jezzy

>> but does that necessarily mean that all wild populations are genetically >>diverse? What if an isolated population has very little if any genotypic >>variation among individuals, and the genotype is conserved as a result of >>frequent inbreeding? Can anyone say for sure that none of this is possible, >>or does not occur in any group of organisms including tarantulas? Just >>wondering.

Excelent, no one knows, there is only speculation amonst the anti inbreeders, When you mention isolated island populations (an island can also be land based but separated by a geographical barrier) they have NO answer, just see how many can show inbreeding does not carry on here with proof.

Darkfinder

>In wild populations, you limit bad alleles out of the gentics. If an allele does >not support the surivival and another one does, then the one that does will >breed and the one that does not will not breed. Those that are too slow, >too small, too big, too weak do not survive.

So you are saying here there is no genetic variability in size or strength in genetically diverse wild populations, and those that do not fit the "norm" die

Have a read of another Dawkings book, the Blind Watchmaker, then do onto the ancestors tale then climbing mount improbable, BTW these are all books on Evolutionary theory, down to DNA level

>>IF tarantulas are like any living population, and you do not outbreed, there >>will be problems.

Parthanogenesis and what scientific papers can you referance as proof of this statement?

Ray

 

[FryLock]

That would be Mascaraneus remotus Ray, nothing else near by species wise iirc, and has abdomen marking's unlike other Eumenophorinae.

 

[Steve Nunn]

Hi,
Raven described (a few years back and I cannot remember the name) a species from the Mygalomorphae that was intertidal, it's known range is 10mx 10m (yes, meters, not miles ), it was at the time the rarest spider on the planet. Only a few specimens and they were incredibly vulnerable.

Amazing that they existed in our time when we were able to document them at this point of evolution.

I have no point to make, just thought I'd throw that tidbit out there

Steve

 

[FryLock]

Hi,
Raven described (a few years back and I cannot remember the name) a species from the Mygalomorphae that was intertidal, it's known range is 10mx 10m (yes, meters, not miles ), it was at the time the rarest spider on the planet. Only a few specimens and they were incredibly vulnerable.

We have (or had) a Salticid in the UK that was found on the roof of one our university's and no were else, but in this case i can't remember if it was a single population of a jumper found outside the UK or new sp :?, anyone remember more about it.

 

[Nich]

>
>But in the early years of this hobby, we must take care not to follow a the >leader.

WE ARE in the early years of this hobby still

He was speaking in present tense....implying that the post your reading will be looked back on as "the early years". Im a believer in the ramifications of inbreeding, so there is where I stand in this post....
You should be standing on the stool you were handed, the jet stream of hot info just past overhead again....maybe next season....:wall: There is no point in acknowledging statements from him. No offense, just too little sense in it.

 

[Scorpiove]

Thedarkfinder: In royal familes (excluding egyptian pharoahs) most of the time only cousins were inbred. This happens a lot actually in current society belive it or not. My dads cousins (They were cousins to eachother too) married each other and produced normal kids. Its also probably safe to breed lets say neice and uncle. There is enough genetic variation to ensure some fresh genes. I will agree though if you have two humans and they are as close as brother and sister or father and daughter, you are going to have more problems. That degree of inbreeding has also happened in my family (not willingly, the person responsible was a tyrant)

The resulting offspring had some problems, one had autism and mental retardation and the other was just slow. I don't think this problem happens alot in cousins or neice uncle or nephew aunt relationships that happened a lot in european royal families, the rate at which problems became apparent was just 2% higher than offsrping from two "strangers". I know this doesn't apply to invertebrates nor should it, and besides we are discussing invertebrates that are related at the brother/sister level. IMO though, invertebrates are less prone to genetic problems than vertebrates. There have been much evidence and examples showing entire invertbrate populations with high ammounts of inbreeding "roaches" is one example.

 

[Thoth]

Genes are never simply expressed, they are controled.

Yes they are they are called constitutively expressed genes. Those are genes that are always on.

Many traits are monogenic controlled by a single gene. Even your example with the blue color is only one layer of control, just different examples of types of control over the same gene, which actually does not happen often [a gene being controlld by several different pathways].

In the wild aa is limiting. The drought kills off all of the aa's. Only leaving AA or Aa that will survive.

This is evolution.

No just natural selection (Yes it may lead to an evolutionary change but it is not evolution.)

Also if the aa in captivity according to you do not breed as often or as much the AA that is also limiting because they will not be in the general population in as high numbers or reproduce as much asthe AA. Same thing occurs with antibiotic resistant bacteria, they are always present, though under normal conditions are exist in extremely low numbers being out-reproduced by non-resistant bacteria. Add the selective pressure of an antibiotic and the story changes.

As you can see you could never get rid of the bad trait because they may use the same genes.

You are simply wrong because according to your example whether or not this bad trait pops up depends on the expression control of the gene, i.e. whether it is expressed or not. Those controls are also genetically encoded, whether for the receptor, the suppressor to bind the receptor et c. So whatever mutation is causing the unfavorable trait can be bred out.

There is no such thing as a bad trait. There is traits the will affect survival, but no bad ones. Things like disease, cancer, and baldness is caused a an mutation. This mutation was happened in the gametes and therefor passed to the organism. Mutations and cross over mixing of the chroisomes makes a different in what will happen.

Various alleles also arose from mutations (genetic drift is a series of mutations). Also I don't see how crossing over has anything to do with anything.

Ultimately, it comes down to alelle frequency.


Swindinian, viruses, technically not even living creatures, have as intricated controls on genetic expression as any higher organism, see the lytic vs. lysogenic pathway (or don't it'll give you a headache)

 

[edesign]

hmmm...so i here I sit straddling the fence, leaning actually. If you had caught me before i graduated high school i can guarantee I would have read it (if i had found it interesting enough lol), but I barely read anymore. I've been on the same novel for 6 months or so now... However I am curious and the next time I go to the book store I'll be sure to skim through it...who knows, i might drop a few dollars and read it Thanks for taking the time to explain that...I can rarely accept most information at face value (damn engineering). If I decide to change my opinion that would be great since I wouldn't have to worry about getting a sibling should I ever decide to breed!

edit: bah...i was in denial lol, i'm convinced (i think...i'll wait til i'm sober to be sure )

 

[angelarachnid]

Edesgn

>>I'll be sure to skim through it...who knows, i might drop a few dollars and >>read it

They are very god books, and pretty heavy to get through, but not as heavy as the Blind Watchmaker

>>I can rarely accept most information at face value

Neither can i, i have found more information to indicate there is no inbreeding in theraphosid spiders, living in isoloated colonys, living in faminly groups, very small quantities of root stock etc,
And no one has ever been able to say for definite with proof:

How many specimens we need in a captive colony to avoid inbreeding,
How many generations it takes for inbreeding depression to show,
What are the signs of inbreeding depresion: small males and infertile eggsacs can also be explinations for natural size variation and bad matings.

Only speculation (and from what i can gather) based on one (unwritten) report of one brother sisiter mating which resulted in a bad eggsac. I have bad eggsacs from inbred and from freshley wild caught specimens (all all combinations inbetween) but i wont say 100% that it is inbreeding, i would say its more like bad husbandry for geting the eggsac, bad matings, infertile males, males being kept to warm so the sperm is destroyed, females being kept to warm after mating so the sperm is destroyed (if my latest P. fasciata eggsac is good i will have some data supporting this theory).

>>If I decide to change my opinion

But believe me if hard fact scientific proof was show to me that inbreeding depression occurs in theraphosid spiders (not examples of royal families etc, but THERAPHOSID SPIDERS) i would be the first to change my opinion.

There are thousands of people getting paid to work on birds world wide, so the information on birds is being found all the time.

And that is the beauty of science is that it is adaptable for ever changing and forever expanding and growing closer to the answers we ask, and the people working in any of thier respective fields adapt and change.

I think we can count on one hand the paid scientists working on theraphosid spiders, and most of those are probably working taxonomically.

We as the hobbyist (same as in the reptile world) are the ones finding most of the new information for science. We are the ones who (as seen in this thread and many others on many websites) debate, discuss, share ideas, experiment...do all the things that for other areas in the scientific world are being done by people who get paid to do it. So we must also be willing to adapt and change.

It may seem to some people i have done a U turn, but NO i still belive there is no problems with inbreeding in theraphosid spiders...................untill someone can prove there is.

Ray

 

[TheDarkFinder]

Ray

Let me first say that some of my commits above where out of line.

My biggest problem with just bother sister mating is that it is more likely to cause inbreeding depression. There is no limiting factor, no way to prevent it.

This is my point, there is no science on this topic. Very little work is being done on this when you compare it to other feilds, like birds.

You say that you have some information that you are not sharing, share.

We can not say what is a normal eggsack size, heck it is hard to say what the normal size for the tarantulas in the wild are.

But to say that since there is no proof against it, means that it is ok to do it, is not very wise.

There are time and places that it has to be done. But just to do it because we can, will not help.

If we look at other spiders we find inbreeding depression.

We have seen it in Stegodyphus lineatus. But have already given you that link and you have choosen to ignore it.

OK by me.
thedarkfinder