Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is for anyone who may know a thing or two about sperm retention in female dragons. We all know female dragons can retain sperm and have multiple clutchs from one breeding. My question is - If you breed a female to more than one male in one season ,do you think it would be possible for the female to retain sperm from both of the males? And use the sperm from both males in fertilizing one clutch of eggs? resulting in a clutch of babies that have to different fathers??? Or would the female not accept the new sperm or possibly get rid of the old stuff? So if you have opinions or facts on this matter please post them!!! thanks

To answer that question it would require DNA testing. To my knowledge, I don't think it's been done.
I would imagine that a single clutch could be fathered by multiple fathers.

Joel R

YES, -a female BD that copulates and retains sperm from two different paternals, can use sprem from both within a sing;e clutch and produce a 'family' that has two differnt fathers. This makes the sibliings 'half-brothers/half-sister'. This helps to disperse the genepool, and in rare situations, the sibsters might mate and produce viable offspring (but their progeny must mate outside of this circle, lest defects come to the fore..)
There's a name for that, two patronages in one family-brood-clutch, which escapes me. The same thing can occur in dogs. Not so much the sperm-retention thing, but a female dog (a "[bleep]" can when in estrus be inseminated with two (or more!) male dogs, and produce a litter of pups with mixed AND seperate lineages. People with 'show dogs' becry this fact when their prized female show-dog gets 'mounted by a mutt' because it scatters the desireable genes of the 'show dog' with the genes of the 'traveling salesman' father, and the genes of all the pups comes into question.
From personal experience, I had several female BDs and all of great color and distinctive traits, a colorful male and a 'barbatta mutt', a large, dark male of questionable lineage. And they both 'had' the female, and she'd produce clutches of babys, some of briliant colorations like father #1, some of muted and duller colors of 'both fathers', and a few that definately had some 'barbatta-esque' traits of father #2.

I loved 'em all, but a 'breeder purist' might not have been so charitable...

-Joel
Woodland_reptiles