Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been wondering this for quite some time and thought I'd ask since there are a lot of breeders on this forum. Why is inbreeding in BD's frowned upon? I've seen a lot of comments about striving to maintain good health, quality, etc. But it's been done with snakes forever.

Pretty much all the morphs you see in snakes are the result of inbreeding to get recessive gene traits, right? I would think you would want to inbreed BD's the same way.

It seems most color phases of BD's are just that...color phases. The result of selective breeding to maximize color, not a genetic morph. Is this correct? I say this because my BD is a flame X snow and someone told me if I wanted babies that had more red to them...to just breed him to a dragon that had some red color to it. That doesn't sound like a genetic morph to me. I would think you'd breed him to a clutchmate instead to get a clutch of flames, snows, and hets.

I'm not a breeder, and I'm not planning on breeding my little guy. It's just some thoughts I've been wondering about (I used to breed snakes) and I'm dying to hear some comments. The genetics aspect of snake breeding always fascinated me, and the BD community seems to be a lot different. I guarantee you if a ball python owner had two clutchmates that were piebald morphs...they'd breed them to each other ASAP! LOL By the way...not trying to start an argument here...like I said, genetics and morphs have always fascinated me...I know...I'm a geek!

I am actually learning about genetics in school right now. I dont think that two bearded dragons from the same clutch being bred together would definitely make a clutch of all the same color. Unless one or both of the parents were purebred.
( am i right? )

That's not my question...but here's a quick genetics 101 for ya. Let's use X trait and Y trait (let's say albino for the Y trait) for this example. If you have two parents (XY male and XY female) that are normal looking, but are heterozygous for a recessive trait (the Y trait) and you breed them, you'll get babies that are normal (XX), albino (YY), and heterozygous for albinism (XY) meaning that they look normal, but carry the recessive gene for albinism. If you breed an XX to a YY, you'll get all heterozygous but normal looking babies. YY to YY is a clutch of all recessive trait, and XX to XX is all normal.

That's the way I approached breeding my snakes, but I'm wondering if these color phases in dragons are actual genetic recessive traits (morphs), or if they're just a result of good breeding decisions to bring out colors.

Although you can usually breed siblings together without worrying to much about deformities, it's not recommended in general because its not really necessary.There are so many people breeding dragons out there and the goal for most of them is to achieve a rich red color and great personality. With that in mind it's very easy for one to continually improove thier bloodline without inbreeding.Color is not a recessive or dominant trait it is a hereditary trait.Hpomealinism, the translucents(which are hypoirristic) and what's called "leucistic" (which are hyperirristic) are examples of recessive traits. Please check out my reply to Beardielover13's post on genetics from Dec.6.

Thanks Paul. It's just a whole different world than what I'm used to with snakes. People get corn snakes and breed back to parents, between siblings, etc. all the time for many generations to get all those crazy morphs that they have. I was just curious to hear from breeders about this topic. Like I said, I'm not even planning on breeding, but just something that I've been wondering since making the switch from the snake world to BD land.

the biggest difference between snakes and Beardies is snakes have a strong bloodline with new imports coming into the bloodline all the time. Beardies have a very limited background and importing a Beardie is no easy task. getting a new bloodline is very difficult to do. you will not see ads for wild caught Beardies EVER! With the bloodline being so weak do to years of inbreeding to begin with, continued inbreeding is dangerous.
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Bennett

www.beardiedragon.com

Thanks Bennett, that explains a lot then. I was confused as to why there are soooo many beardies out there and not a million morphs like you see in the snake world.

The only place to get bearded dragons in the wild is Australia. Because Australia has a ban on all exports of their native species, it is very difficult to get any fresh stock. However it's not impossible to get wild caught bearded dragons but it is a long process to do so.

dont be fooled bearded dragons do still come out of Australia, and probably with some regularity,but it is illegal.

illegal.

But there are some exception and some dragons do end up in the hands of US breeders.

Customs seizures is one way, Australia will not allow anything that leaves to country to be returned to it. I know of at least two seizure that the animals ended up with breeders or in shelters/legit rescues (not people that claim they are to get free dragons). There are other ways also, but it is very hard to do.

As Paul said, many still do come out of Australia illegally, most of those end up in Europe due to the trade routes and europeon interest already in that area. But, you will not see them for sale as that, since it is illegal.
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www.reptilerooms.com

too many breeders of reptiles have found that you can not inbreed bearded dragons like other reptiles and not have problems, often showing with the first generations and generations after with defect increasing. Some good breeders from the past have stopped breeding BD's for that reason, their colonies were so mixed up they elected to stop breeding and let the animals retire and live out their lifes as pets.

Growth and size issues are a problem seen within the first generating and diminshing more with each

Dr Kathryn Tosney Professor of Biology, The University of Michigan says:
Inbreeding usually doesn't produce obvious birth defects in the first generation, but it does have other bad effects. In many many species, if siblings are mated, then the progeny show immediate effects:the fertility diminishes, the hatching rate is lowered (due to early lethalities; many die early in development), survival through infant and adolescence is lower and the adult size diminishes (possibly explaining the general reduction in dragon size over the last decade). Those effects are seen in the first generation. In later generations, birth defects also become more common.

To me, after seeing so many problem dragons that can be attributed to inbreeding, its not worth the risk and we are trying to get back the health, vitality and size of dragon in the past.
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www.reptilerooms.com