# Incest with mantids



## KobeM (Sep 15, 2021)

Hy there,

Is it a problem to pair 2 mantids which came from the same ootheca? Won’t there be trouble for the nimphs, speaking of incest or something?

Im looking forward to the responds 

thank you already!

KobeM


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## ausar318 (Sep 16, 2021)

I wouldn't suggest any more than one generation of incest babies if it can be helped, maybe two if you want to push it. Any more than that and you'll have a lot of nymph deaths, and they'll be much weaker and more fragile than they should be if they were from separate lineages. Thankfully most species are pretty accessible, so it's not too hard to keep the gene pool clean!

Also keep in mind that most males have one less molt than the females, which is kind of a natural way to  limit the amount of incest in the wild. It's still going to happen, but its a little more difficult since the females mature more slowly


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## KobeM (Sep 16, 2021)

ausar318 said:


> I wouldn't suggest any more than one generation of incest babies if it can be helped, maybe two if you want to push it. Any more than that and you'll have a lot of nymph deaths, and they'll be much weaker and more fragile than they should be if they were from separate lineages. Thankfully most species are pretty accessible, so it's not too hard to keep the gene pool clean!
> 
> Also keep in mind that most males have one less molt than the females, which is kind of a natural way to  limit the amount of incest in the wild. It's still going to happen, but its a little more difficult since the females mature more slowly


Yea that is what I thought already. Thanks for the help!!


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## guapoalto049 (Sep 16, 2021)

I think inbreeding is heavily overstated. I’ve personally bred a species for 6 years that originated from one ootheca. Hatch rates, adult size, and nymph survival have not changed. 
There is no scientific data and anyone, including me, is telling anecdotes. I don’t believe mantises in nature are constantly sharing alleles every 1-2 generations, they just don’t move enough for that to happen. I also think when people fail to breed a species, they look for a scapegoat for the failure. Mantis breeding is difficult, sometimes it just doesn’t work out even when things are done perfectly. There’s a ton we don’t understand, but repetitive inbreeding has been done on many occasions without ill effects that I’ve seen thus far.


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## agent A (Sep 19, 2021)

my guess is that inbreeding can cause issues, but not as often as we may think

the reason inbreeding causes issues is because it allows lethal recessives to accumulate, but there are a few issues with this. 1: it assumes there are lethal recessives to begin with. I'm sure that in SOME cases, there are, but I doubt it happens every damn time. The other issue is that continual inbreeding flushes these recessives out entirely

Keep in mind a whole bunch of parasitoid wasp species have a life history where the mother lays a bunch of female and a few male eggs into a host, the larvae develop, and immediately upon emerging, the male inseminates his sisters. These are some of the most diverse wasps in the world

we also heavily inbreed basically all feeder species, including mice. I suspect issues with mantis breeding occur because of bad diet, lack of UV light, improper temperatures, bacterial infections, etc

I know that I have had far fewer issues with mantis rearing and breeding in general when I started cleaning all of my rearing supplies with 10% bleach, gut loading feeders with highly nutritious food (including crested gecko diet), offering varied diet, and having day/night temperature shifts


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