quote "

4) Nobody has EVER said that Man-made captive born morphological creations are to be returned to the wild. Their probable lack of survivability in the wild is most likely for the best"endquote



A little more information on this subject... there is a lot of good information that is appliciable to this topic using the problems with hatchery raised/bred fish as an example.



As Kathy noted above, the populations in captivity are for the most part not being managed in a way to sustain the maximal genetic variation for the longest period of time. This means that even without active selection for color variations, the genetics are going to diverge fairly quickly from the wild population as those animals most tolerant (adapted) to captivity are going to do better and produce a greater variety of offspring. If these animals are then released to boost a population then if the released animals are able to breed, they can actually reduce the viability of the surviving wild populations.

For those interested check out some of the following (there is actually a wide variety of animals showing these effects...)

http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/56/4/459.pdf



http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/54/6/1051.pdf



http://www.life.illinois.edu/kahughes/Jimenez_et_al1994.pdf



http://www.jstor.org/pss/2385902



Ed

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