Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Lets pretty much set this question up. Pretend we have a River Road father that is wild caught and the mother is an F2 or F3. What would the offspring be in terms of F1, F2, etc?

I assume that the baby would be an F1 regardless if the mother was an F1, F2 or F3 because the father is WC. Is this true?

~Tony
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You can never have only one snake!

The offspring would be generic...

I guess it's funny, but from past converations we have had here some might agree!

Oh, you forgot to mention how many feet apart they were found..

~ Mike Russo

Really??? I thought as long as both parents were River Roads then it wouldn't be considered generic. I guess many have different preferences on what would be a generic. You did mention that many agreed on it though.

The father has been bounced around from breeder to many other different breeders so not sure how many feet they were apart. In my opinion they are pure River roads =(. The mother was CB.

Tony
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You can never have only one snake!

No No Tony.. I was joking with you!

~ Mike Russo

GEEZ MIKE! SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF ME WILL YA!!!

Sigh...so glad it wasn't true! Mean intentions!!! =)

~Tony
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You can never have only one snake!

Mike is joking around, they are not generic, it is only a joke.
However actually you are wrong in assuming they would become F1's. No offense but you are 100% wrong in thinking that you can improve (so to speak) the status by breeding back to a wild caught male.

As you should know the term F1 would mean that the parents of your female were wild caught. If you breed her to an unrelated wild caught male those babies would be F2. If you breed those babies back to their wild caught father again their offspring would be F3, and for that matter if you breed those babies to each other (siblings) those babies would still be F3 also. The term F1, F2 or F3 refers to how many generations removed these babies are from wild caught, and no matter what you always use the most removed parent and add one to it.

It might help to think of it like this, the wild caught parents were sucessful in competing in nature and theoretically proved able to survive in the wild, f1's are one generation down the chain and might not have been able to survive or might not have all the nessisary traits or instincts to survive to adulthood in the wild, f2's are even farther removed from natural selection. This is a whole other huge topic for discussion.

Now some people might correct me because they have a more strict use of the terms. I have heard that even if you have wild caught parents, the first time they are bred together in captivity they produce f1's and the second time they are bred together in captivity they produce F2's and so on. For snake breeding purposes this is confusing and worthless in my opinion and I believe we here refer to offspring from wild caught parents as F1's regardless regardless of which number clutch the babies came from.

Jim

>>It might help to think of it like this, the wild caught parents were sucessful in competing in nature and theoretically proved able to survive in the wild, f1's are one generation down the chain and might not have been able to survive or might not have all the nessisary traits or instincts to survive to adulthood in the wild, f2's are even farther removed from natural selection. This is a whole other huge topic for discussion.>>

Much of snake behavior is hard wired into the genes. Snakes do, however, learn about their home ranges through experience and thus know where to go to spend the day, the winter, and where to find food and shelter etc. Captive bred animals, unless they are interspecific hybrids, should have almost all of their instincts hardwired into the genes as well. Therefore it would make little difference how many generations have passed since the ancestor of a captive was caught in the wild, the newly hatched snakes should still have almost all of the tools needed for survival. On the other hand, a wild caught adult animal subsequently released into an unfamiliar area (e.g. a few miles away) may have a diminished chance of survival, even though it has not been kept in captivity, because of unfamiliarity with its new environment.

Even animals domesticated for thousands of years, such as dogs, cats, pigs, and horses, etc., still retain much of their instincts, and they are fully capable of survival in the wild should they become feral.

This is a question I've seen come up on a regular basis and for some reason there are many out there who believe that filial generations are related to the number of generations a lineage is removed from the wild. Terming an animal F1, F2, F3 has absolutely nothing to do with the number of generations removed from wild stock. Filial generations are designators for relatedness. A parent generation (P) produces F1s. If F1s (siblings) are bred to each other they produce F2s. If F2s (the sibling products of the F1 to F1 pairing) are bred together they produce F3s. If an F3 from a certain stock is paired with an unrelated animal, the pairing becomes a new P generation and their offspring become F1s again. Filial designators are used in controlled self crossing to explore genetic disposition... typically for simple Mendelian recessives. Long story short, if you breed a WC male to a captive third generation inbred female, the pairing becomes a P generation and their offspring F1s.

Damon, That is great information and you have opened my eyes to why it is so confusing. Because the term relates to inbreeding of a family line, I and many others are infact by definition misusing the term on a regular basis when describing locality alterna. I think this is due to the fact that usually we are not doing a genetic experiment (like hybrids or albinos) on a specific individual trait but are simply trying to produce offspring representative of a locality and not one specific gene pool family or trait. Basically The trait we are studying becomes the locality as a whole and the origin family we are using becomes the locality as a whole as well.

If Tony wants to avoid confusion and/or be honest about representing his offspring he better designate them as F1 with 50% wild caught blood from the father. his snake is F1 genetically by definition but not F1 as it relates to purity back to the locality for reasons I described in my other post.

I sincerely appreciate you clearing this up for me so when I cross my F3 ghost black gap out to unrelated normal F3 black gap blairs I can designate the offspring as double het F1 black gaps from c.b. Johnson line parents. These offspring will be F1 for hypo / Anery inbreeding purposes but I do not consider them F1 for Black Gap locality purposes.

Thanks,
Jim

Damon, That is great information and you have opened my eyes to why it is so confusing. Because the term relates to inbreeding of a family line, I and many others are infact by definition misusing the term on a regular basis when describing locality alterna.

Yes. This is something that has bothered me for years. Whenever I see a snake sold as an F1, F2, etc., I simply shake my head and ignore, or I assume this means the snakes are inbred.

Even if the terminology was apropos, I've always wondered exactly the significance of "number of generations from the wild" was supposed to be. It shouldn't have any bearing whatsoever.

I sincerely appreciate you clearing this up for me so when I cross my F3 ghost black gap out to unrelated normal F3 black gap blairs I can designate the offspring as double het F1 black gaps from c.b. Johnson line parents.

If you breed any two non-sibling snakes together they produce F1 offspring, regardless of whether they were wild caught, captive born or whatever. Your question is kind of moot since your "F3"s aren't really F3 (third filial generation) anyway.
Designating the offspring as "F1" just promulgates the incorrect usage of the terminology.

It would be much more useful to come up with a new, correct terminology. Why not CB1, CB2, etc. to reflect generations out of the wild or generation 2, gen 3, gen 4, etc. for captive bred morphs.

I'm afraid this is much like the terms "heritable" and describing traits as "codominant" and "T positive" as it often appears in the herp industry. They are often used incorrectly or in cases where it is a confused guess at best!
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

all of the misused terminology is to make pedigrees:

Nice! That is a great way to keep records Damon! I wish I had something fancy like that!

~Tony
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You can never have only one snake!

I agree we need a better and easier system. I tryed to give my 2 cents, but it would be nice if some others on this forum would chime in as to why how many generations removed from the wild is relevant or not for that matter. I feel very strongly that as generations go on in captivity the snakes evolve differently. the "natural" selection in captivity is completely different than it is in the wild and that is why it is totally relevant.

Something that can be easily grasped is the tendancy of hatchlings to take pinkies from the beginning. probably 1 in 10 takes them right away, and helps in captivity but would mean little to nothing in the wild.

I just have one thing to add and that is my Hypo and Anery Black gap is actually an F3 because it is inbred between parents and children in an effort to produce ghost offspring. This was done by Dan Johnson and he gives the designations on his old website if you can, check it out to help clarify things. However I will be crossing him out now and the correct use of the F1 designation will help to describe his offspring as it relates to the hypo / anery "experiment" but not really as far as purity to the locale.

For me, knowledge of the number of generations an animal is removed from its wild ancestors is critical for several reasons...

1. Captive produced alterna are often selected for their novelty... after several generations the animals may be genetically pure, but phenotypically they trend toward being non-representative. I like representative alterna because they define what I enjoy so much about the different localities.

2. Captive gene pools are typically small. Many times the exact locality is lost through lack of available breeding stock or apathy on the part of the keepers. First generation captives can either be paired with more WC stock or the first generation offspring of another WC pair. The second WC pair or WC animals paired with the first generation captives have to come from pretty near the original pair (at least for my taste). That gets harder and harder to do the further you get into a project. More often than not a pairing with CB stock occurs somewhere down the line and that stock has typically been privy to the pressures I outlined in point #1.

That is an excellent idea Chris!

I think to avoid much of the confusion CB1, CB2 is the best way to classify generations removed from wild.
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You can never have only one snake!

Hey Jim!

I'm not the breeder, but I'll definately classify it as F1 since it is most accurate!

Thanks for the input everyone. As I can tell, it seems as if there is a lot of confusion on determining f1s and the f2s, etc.

I'll post the picture of the snake when I have available time!

~Tony
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You can never have only one snake!

I see...

The Wc father and the cb mother are unrelated. Therefore my snake should be classified as an F1.
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You can never have only one snake!

NICEK......IS IT GENERIC OR LOCALE???.....AND VADER SAYS .....F-u