alan,

this is all crazy interesting. when we look at the history of the eastern indigo, protected since the 1970s and the relative lack of problems, inbreeding-wise, for a number of years suggests two things. either there has been a constant trickle of WC specimens into the captive breeding population, or serious inbreeding didn't start until recently. of course, communication from the earlier days was extremely restricted and we document so much more information now.

one of my suspicions as to why so few couperi breeders sent me skins for genotyping was either they suspected or knew they had WC genes and were afraid of being caught, or they didn't want others to know that their stock was related to each other. the whole story has to be interesting, but i'm sure we'll never know all of it.

matt

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