My first breeding project, looking for advice. H. pulchripes.

[Jess S]

Excellent! We will look forward to the update I'm sure. I know I certainly will

 

[scurry]

Inbreeding isn't inherently bad. I don't think the effects on inverts have been studied, as others pointed out, but it's not necessarily bad. In some situations (probably not this one), it's even desirable. Marijuana plants are really inbred, specifically because they don't want genetic diversity (the THC levels are impacted by genetics, so "diversity" often means "lower THC"). That likely doesn't apply here, because we're not trying to select for a particular genetic component.

If you want to see the effects of inbreeding, watch what happens to the pokies that are on the ESA list now. Since they can't be imported anymore, we have a relatively fixed genetic pool. The only option for maintaining the population will be breeding the specimens we have, we'll see how that turns out.

If we assume that tarantula inbreeding has similar effects to mammal inbreeding (tenuous, but the genetic machinery is the same), inbreeding increases the chances of the tarantula inheriting recessive or complex genetic abnormalities. I say abnormality instead of diseases because in mammals, there are a range of uncommon genetic expressions that aren't diseases. A personal favorite is heterochromia, where the animal/human is born with two different colored eyes. There are of course also very serious genetic disorders caused by inbreeding, the most well known being hemophilia due to it's prevalence among European royalty a few centuries ago (who were prolific inbreeders).

Long story short, you're rolling the dice. You could end up with perfectly normal T's, you could end up with T's that have an awesome new color scheme, you could end up with T's that can't molt because their carapace won't harden, or you could end up spawning the son of satan (kidding). We don't know. If we understood what genes caused what in T's, you could sequence their genes and get a good idea of what the probable outcomes are, but we don't understand that and you're probably going to get weird looks from the people at 23 and Me if you try to have them sequence tarantula genes.

If it were me, I'd go for it. You already have the T's; the worst thing that happens is the female eats the male (which was not long for this world anyways), and then you get a bunch of slings that don't make it because they inherited a genetic disorder. It would be really disappointing, but it's not like you're out hundreds of dollars.

 

[Jess S]

Inbreeding isn't inherently bad. I don't think the effects on inverts have been studied, as others pointed out, but it's not necessarily bad. In some situations (probably not this one), it's even desirable. Marijuana plants are really inbred, specifically because they don't want genetic diversity (the THC levels are impacted by genetics, so "diversity" often means "lower THC"). That likely doesn't apply here, because we're not trying to select for a particular genetic component.

If you want to see the effects of inbreeding, watch what happens to the pokies that are on the ESA list now. Since they can't be imported anymore, we have a relatively fixed genetic pool. The only option for maintaining the population will be breeding the specimens we have, we'll see how that turns out.

If we assume that tarantula inbreeding has similar effects to mammal inbreeding (tenuous, but the genetic machinery is the same), inbreeding increases the chances of the tarantula inheriting recessive or complex genetic abnormalities. I say abnormality instead of diseases because in mammals, there are a range of uncommon genetic expressions that aren't diseases. A personal favorite is heterochromia, where the animal/human is born with two different colored eyes. There are of course also very serious genetic disorders caused by inbreeding, the most well known being hemophilia due to it's prevalence among European royalty a few centuries ago (who were prolific inbreeders).

Long story short, you're rolling the dice. You could end up with perfectly normal T's, you could end up with T's that have an awesome new color scheme, you could end up with T's that can't molt because their carapace won't harden, or you could end up spawning the son of satan (kidding). We don't know. If we understood what genes caused what in T's, you could sequence their genes and get a good idea of what the probable outcomes are, but we don't understand that and you're probably going to get weird looks from the people at 23 and Me if you try to have them sequence tarantula genes.

If it were me, I'd go for it. You already have the T's; the worst thing that happens is the female eats the male (which was not long for this world anyways), and then you get a bunch of slings that don't make it because they inherited a genetic disorder. It would be really disappointing, but it's not like you're out hundreds of dollars.

Great, well argued post. Learnt something from it too

 

[KenNet]

Inbreeding isn't inherently bad. I don't think the effects on inverts have been studied, as others pointed out, but it's not necessarily bad. In some situations (probably not this one), it's even desirable. Marijuana plants are really inbred, specifically because they don't want genetic diversity (the THC levels are impacted by genetics, so "diversity" often means "lower THC"). That likely doesn't apply here, because we're not trying to select for a particular genetic component.

If you want to see the effects of inbreeding, watch what happens to the pokies that are on the ESA list now. Since they can't be imported anymore, we have a relatively fixed genetic pool. The only option for maintaining the population will be breeding the specimens we have, we'll see how that turns out.

If we assume that tarantula inbreeding has similar effects to mammal inbreeding (tenuous, but the genetic machinery is the same), inbreeding increases the chances of the tarantula inheriting recessive or complex genetic abnormalities. I say abnormality instead of diseases because in mammals, there are a range of uncommon genetic expressions that aren't diseases. A personal favorite is heterochromia, where the animal/human is born with two different colored eyes. There are of course also very serious genetic disorders caused by inbreeding, the most well known being hemophilia due to it's prevalence among European royalty a few centuries ago (who were prolific inbreeders).

Long story short, you're rolling the dice. You could end up with perfectly normal T's, you could end up with T's that have an awesome new color scheme, you could end up with T's that can't molt because their carapace won't harden, or you could end up spawning the son of satan (kidding). We don't know. If we understood what genes caused what in T's, you could sequence their genes and get a good idea of what the probable outcomes are, but we don't understand that and you're probably going to get weird looks from the people at 23 and Me if you try to have them sequence tarantula genes.

If it were me, I'd go for it. You already have the T's; the worst thing that happens is the female eats the male (which was not long for this world anyways), and then you get a bunch of slings that don't make it because they inherited a genetic disorder. It would be really disappointing, but it's not like you're out hundreds of dollars.

Thanks! Well put! I'm not in it for the money, I'm just curious to see the "whole process" from a spider that I think is very beautiful and I have never experienced breeding a spider before because I don't have many mature couples.
I totally refuse to put an ad on FB or that Swedish site. Sorry, I'm an oddball

 

[KenNet]

Excellent! We will look forward to the update I'm sure. I know I certainly will

My first breeding project, looking for advice. H. pulchripes.

I got three Harpactira pulchripes as slings about two years ago. It turned out to be one male and two females. The male matured about two weeks ago and I'm thinking of to breeding them. I suppose they are sack-mates, but I don't know for sure. I would love to send the male to someone who has a...

arachnoboards.com

So, I received an answer. It was a long and very interesting reply. He basically says that it's not always one way or the other when it comes to inbreeding spiders. Neither there is no clear line between inbreeding vertibrates or invertibrates.

For example, with the Pardosa astrigera inbreeding leads to fewer offspring, but the inbreed ones do survive better in their natural environment.

Within 3 species from the genus Erigone, inbreed ones had a shorter lifespan and it also affected their behavior by lower the will to spread (ballooning) from the webb where they were born to a new one, witch led to further inbreeding.

The Stegodyphus dumicola lives together on a communal webb and rarely spread beyond that. They are highly inbreed and it doesn't seem to effect them in a negative way. Females that was paired with non related males actually show a lower rate of offspring.