Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know alot of people breed offspring back to parents... But is there any additional concerns when breeding brother and sister? Thanks for the help!

Roddy

That is how all of the double recessive morphs came to be. Breed an albino to an axanthic and you get double hets. Breed the siblings together to get the snow. Same with the coral glow, and many other morphs we will see this year.

I just find it hard to believe that breeding between father and mother and then sister to brother CANT have SOME sort of ill effect on an animal. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Seems to work for West Virginia and Kentucky, what would the harm be?
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Bryan, Atlanta GA

1-0-0 Ball Python - Apep
1-1-0 Rats... no wait... ROTTEN Little Cats - Ra, Bastet
1-0-0 Horse... whoops... BIG Golden Retriever - Jake
0-1-0 Wife
2-0-0 Kids

My siter and my wife was offended by that statement.....lol.

v
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Bryan, Atlanta GA

1-0-0 Ball Python - Apep
1-1-0 Rats... no wait... ROTTEN Little Cats - Ra, Bastet
1-0-0 Horse... whoops... BIG Golden Retriever - Jake
0-1-0 Wife
2-0-0 Kids

Sure it MIGHT, nobody really knows yet. But once you produce the double recessive morph then out-breed it to a normal to get more double recessive hets. It is ok in the short term as far as I am concerned, but mixing bloodlines is always a good idea. You have to remember all spiders are related in some way to the original animal, the same is true for all the platty-lesser family, all related to the original. They seem to be doing fine.

Because Spider, Lesser, and I believe also White Smoke are each some kind of dominant they have been outbred extensively with very little inbreeding. Generations of male spiders have been bred young to large and diverse groups of probably mostly ch older females. Hard to know how much inbreeding occurs in the wild but it might even be that the average example of those three morphs (well, at least the two that have established markets so far) is more outbred than the average ch baby being imported right now. If there are inbred corn snakes yet they would be recessive lines.

Has it occured to anyone... Some of the most spectacular visual morphs ARE detrimental to the "owner" (i.e. individual snake) of the mutation... If/when found in the wild. I would imagine that natural selection would eliminate many of the albinos & "easily seen" morphs.

As far as health concerns, that may be a risk, but there is alot of outbreeding once the morph is established.

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Tammy

0.3 Ball Pythons
0.0.1 Dwarf Caimen
0.0.1 Baby Sav
0.0.2 Nile Monitors
0.1 Siamese Cat (Rescue)
1.0 Yellow Lab (Rescue) "Perfect Dog"
0.1 Bernese Mountain Dog (Rescue) "Brainless Wonder"

Since wild balls aren't exactly know for their extensive travel, there is a lot of in breeding that occurs within in the wild, and they seem to do just fine, they may be designed that way.

I think because the males are ready to breed much earlier than females this helps eliminate immediate sibling breeding.

IMO - best to see if you can do a trade with someone to get new blood into your project (trade your male double het for their male double het). But if you can't - you can breed the sibs.
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Tosha

"Of course, this is just my opinion...and I believe I am God." -- Christopher Bianco

8.20.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and currently un-named)
1.0.0 Angolan Python
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope)
2.2.1 Fish (1,2,3,4)
0.0.3 Lizards rescued from pool skimmer

Nobody has any evidence of how far BPs range naturally or what the extent of inbreeding in natural populations is. These studies have not been done on BPs. People that make these arguments are basing them purely on speculation. I am not trying to start another argument here, but the fact is, there are no facts when it comes to this topic. Only anecdotal evidence, which is pretty worthless for such a scientific question.

I will say this, inbreeding is almost never a good thing for any sexually reproducing organism. Sexual reproduction is geared towards increasing genetic diversity in the offspring, therefore making them more adaptable. Inbreeding lowers genetic diversity and makes a species less adaptable and more likely to have genetic diseases. If an organism such as a snake is going to waste energy and time reproducing sexually, there is little reason why it would inbreed and many reasons why it wouldn't. So one should assume that it is unnatural until *proven* otherwise.
As always, this is just my humble opinion shared by many an ecologist and molecular biologist.

You know - everytime I argue against in breeding I get beaten down with the fact that they do it all the time in nature certain traits being region specific, etc, etc.. Now finally I say that it happens in nature, but best not to do it if it can be avoided and I still get beaten down. I'm going to stop answering this question. LOL
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Tosha

"Of course, this is just my opinion...and I believe I am God." -- Christopher Bianco

8.20.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and currently un-named)
1.0.0 Angolan Python
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope)
2.2.1 Fish (1,2,3,4)
0.0.3 Lizards rescued from pool skimmer

I'm not beating anybody Just my opinion. We should all just be careful not to state things as factual if there aren't really facts out there.

"Inbreeding lowers genetic diversity..."

Does it actually LOWER the diversity...or does the level of diversity simply remain the same and not INCREASE?

"...and makes a species less adaptable and more likely to have genetic diseases."

I doubt that it would make a species MORE likely to have genetic diseases. Outcrossing helps to weed out any defective genes...keeping the bloodline strong. However, if the animals in question have no defective genes to begin with, inbreeding should not be a problem. In fact, it could be argued that outcrossing may easily ADD defective genes to bloodline.

"If an organism such as a snake is going to waste energy and time reproducing sexually, there is little reason why it would inbreed..."

It takes less effort to breed with local (possible siblings) animals than to travel considerable distances...and away from a known food source.

"As always, this is just my humble opinion shared by many an ecologist and molecular biologist."

As always, this is just my humble opinion shared by nobody other than myself. =)

Chris
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“The problem with the Ball Python market rests in the advertisement of true morphs versus pseudo-morphs. Many people are simply taking Normal animals for Granite." – CJBianco

>>"Inbreeding lowers genetic diversity..."
>>
>>Does it actually LOWER the diversity...or does the level of diversity simply remain the same and not INCREASE?

Yes it lowers diversity. Say both sibilings are heterozygous at one loci. 50% of their offspring will be homozygous at this loci. They will already share many of the homozygous loci they inherited from there parents, so the net effect is a lowering of diversity, this gets even more extreme over the second and third generations. This is how we create lab strains of organisms that have exactly the same genotype. Basically you get more and more homozygous animals, thus genetic diversity goes down.

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>>"...and makes a species less adaptable and more likely to have genetic diseases."
>>
>>I doubt that it would make a species MORE likely to have genetic diseases. Outcrossing helps to weed out any defective genes...keeping the bloodline strong. However, if the animals in question have no defective genes to begin with, inbreeding should not be a problem. In fact, it could be argued that outcrossing may easily ADD defective genes to bloodline.

I am sorry that you doubt this, but it is really a fact. Inbreeding heterozygous animals results in 50% of the offspring being homozygous for one of the two alleles. What you thought was a healthy snake may in fact be a carrier of a leathal or detrimental gene that doesn't surface until you see the 25% of your offspring that are homozygous for that gene. Since lethal and detrimental genes are relatively rare, outbreeding insures that your chances of this happening are much lower than when you breed siblings together. Think of it this way, it is easier to get albinos by inbreeding, it is also easier to get every other recessive and potentially detrimental gene (that you didn't know you had) by inbreeding too.

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>>"If an organism such as a snake is going to waste energy and time reproducing sexually, there is little reason why it would inbreed..."
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>>It takes less effort to breed with local (possible siblings) animals than to travel considerable distances...and away from a known food source.
>>
Right, but it takes much less energy to not reproduce sexually (asexual reproduction). The trend seen by ecologist is organisms that have evolved very little over the millenia and have little use for adaptation and genetic diversity will reproduce asexually (i.e with themselves). Species that reproduce sexually usually do so to maintain a high level of adaptability and thus genetic diversity, this is defeated by inbreeding. So ask yourself, why would an animal go to all of the trouble of producing gametes, finding and selecting a reproductive partner, copulating, dealing with health problems associated with reproductive organs and copulation itself, etc... to just keep the exact same gene pool. Many species do not travel large distances to breed, but also limit inbreeding to a bare minimum. There are a variety of ways that different organisms get around inbreeding, so it would seem nature does not prefer inbreeding, but hey you are entitled to inbreed your snakes all you want.