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RE: explain

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Posted by: Aaron at Wed Jun 16 00:35:15 2010   [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Aaron ]  
   

"You are banking on the "likelyhood" of geneflow???? Please qualify that? What does that mean and How can you say such a thing without evidence? Also how do you know that a specific "look/color/pattern" has anything to do with a given locality or geneflow? Where is the proof? How do you know it is not more time(geological)/habitat specific?"

Not quite sure what you mean by "banking" on the likelyhood of geneflow. Basicly I would say the goal of my locality projects is simply to produce specimens that look like what I have seen in the wild at those localities.

As far as the likelyhood of geneflow goes, I think if there are no physical barriers in the habitat to prevent geneflow then it is likely that some occurs on at least an occassional basis. The evidence I have for this is that my captive snakes are not very choosey about who they breed.

In my collection the willingness to breed essentially whoever is available has been demonstrated by captive born sibling to sibling, captive born parent to offspring as well as unrelated captive borns to each other. I also have bred wild caughts to wild caughts that were captured several miles and several years apart.

I have only had two instances of an ovulating female not being bred when put with a ready male. One was where I put a captive born ovulating female in with a captive born proven breeder male of an unrelated bloodline and the male would not show any intrest in her. After about ten or fifteen minutes of watching them not breed I put the female in with a sibling male and they bred right away. The other instance was where I put an young captive born ovulating female in with her much larger wild caught male parent. She did that tail lifting thing females do and he tried to line up with her but it he was unable to do so and after about a half an hour I separated them. Interestingly the following year after the female had grown some I tried again and they bred.

I realize these are just captive observations and they don't prove anything about what they do in the wild but I do think it is pretty strong evidence. The two instances of them not breeding seem especially significant to me because it shows that even in captivity they can "choose" not to breed. If I hadn't seen that I might think that captivity tends to break them of any natural instincts they may have about only breeding with specimens of their same family group or soemthing like that. The fact that even in captivity they sometimes "choose" not to breed seems to indicate that when they do "choose" to breed it is not somehow forced by captive conditions.

As far as color and pattern being tied to locality and genetics, the evidence comes from both captive and wild observations. The wild observations just show that certain colors and patterns are occuring in certain areas. Why that is so is something that is very interesting to me but I am not really trying to solve that puzzle with my captive collection. In my collection the babies I've produced almost always have had a very strong resemblance to the adults that produced them, or to other specimens that I have seen from the same locality. All on my breeders are kept in the same room, same type of cages, given the same diet, same temps, brumated in the same room, etc. and all the eggs are incubated in the same incubator, same substrate, etc. Basicly everything is the same environmentally speaking. To me this is evidence that genetics plays a strong role in how the babies look.

   

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