Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is it ok to breed a parent to a sibling or a sibling to a sibling in order to attain a desired trait? If not what are the negative effects?
Thanks!
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-Doug Daly

This is a much larger discussion and I'm sure a much more varied answer may come from the morph forum, although what you get may be rather biased.

Doing as you suggest once or maybe even twice should not pose any undesired effects but every time you do increases the chance. What happens is essentually the accumulation of hidden recessive traits. Traits that may be desirable (which is why you asked the question I"m sure) and traits that are undesirable such as a weakened immune system, blindness ect. I am uncertain but I believe the incidence of mutations are also increased when breeding a tight family tree. Examples of breeding gone wild are the blind albino iguanas, the RES and eyelash vipers without eyes, the weakened poor-doing blizzard lizards ect ect.

All in all what you are suggesting (in my opinion) should be avoided. For example, if you have a few related het for albino corn snakes, then it is not hard to get another unrelated het or albino corn snake. When inbreeding is really important is if you are one of the very lucky few that have obtained a truly one of a kind snake; like the first ever pie-bald ball python. Obviously if it is the only snake ever to show this trait, then inbreeding is needed in the first few generations to build numbers of hets and finally piebalds. The morals and ethics surrounding all morph and hybrid questions are truely large and seem to be a forever evolving debate.