# Can you breed mantids with their siblings?



## uralowl (Jul 16, 2012)

I've recently had two of my Egyptain mantids molt into adults, luckily enough, one's male and one's female. However, they were both born from the same ooth and I was wondering, is it possible to breed a mantis with its sibling and will there be any ill effects on the offspring if I do this?


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## kitkat39 (Jul 16, 2012)

Breed them with anyone you want in the family tree. As long as they are the same species. You will be overloaded with nymphs either way! HAVE FUN! =)


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## brancsikia339 (Jul 16, 2012)

I did it with blue flashes and had no ill effects


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## frogparty (Jul 16, 2012)

LOL I love when people say that. F1 you probably wont notice, but several generations in you will see things like infertility, decreased ooth viability and size, and lower survival rate for nymphs. If your mantis are WC great, you have nymphs from a pairing most likely from non related animals. HOWEVER, if you have nymphs from a line that has been inbred for some time you are not doing the hobby any good by perpatuating an inbred line. I would try to obtain unrelated animals for breeding


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## mantisboy (Jul 16, 2012)

I read about this somewhere and it basically said that the different molt rates between males and females was natures of attempting to avoid inbreeding. I have reduced my stable of mantids from the same Ooth to 2 males and 3 females. When the males are mature I am setting them free, then I will catch some males in late August to breed with the females.


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## gripen (Jul 16, 2012)

frogparty said:


> LOL I love when people say that. F1 you probably wont notice, but several generations in you will see things like infertility, decreased ooth viability and size, and lower survival rate for nymphs. If your mantis are WC great, you have nymphs from a pairing most likely from non related animals. HOWEVER, if you have nymphs from a line that has been inbred for some time you are not doing the hobby any good by perpatuating an inbred line. I would try to obtain unrelated animals for breeding


You have no proof of this. I have breed the same stock of chinese mantids for 8 gens and have not seen any of this.


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## frogparty (Jul 16, 2012)

I have plenty of proof in the form of college level invertebrate zoology education. I will post references. I will need to dig that book out of storage.

How closely do you keep track of your #s

Its not going to happen all at once right away, but you will begin to see a deterioration of the reproductive viability of your strain over the course of time. Other aspects will happen more slowly, but will be noticable. If youre only working with a strain a few gen removed from WC, then fine.... but a line perpetually inbred with no influx of new genetics will eventually deteriorate


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## frogparty (Jul 16, 2012)

But more important than that, you cannot make an argument for why you would PURPOSEFULLY continue to inbreed when you can easily find unrelated animals to breed. Overall if people want the mantis hobby to succeed long term as a captively sustainable one, then people should try harder to breed unrelated animals


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## kitkat39 (Jul 16, 2012)

I was actually referring to his Egyptian mantis. Those guys, I would probably WANT to see ill effects because they multiply like cockroaches and it gets a bit overwhelming.

There are other species that I've kept that seem to have died out due to too much inbreeding. The first few generations they'd be perfectly fine, but then for no reason the ooths stopped hatching or the hatch rates were much lower and the nymphs were much weaker.


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## frogparty (Jul 16, 2012)

thank you.....I really hope people start to see the benefits of ensuring unrelated bloodlines.


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## gripen (Jul 16, 2012)

frogparty said:


> thank you.....I really hope people start to see the benefits of ensuring unrelated bloodlines.


I am not saying that you should use inbreeding as the preferred method. I am just saying that inbreeding has a greatly reduced effect on inverts. Though I would rather inbreed than mix stocks.


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## Sneaky123 (Jul 16, 2012)

I'm sure this is just a strange exception, but I bred some sibling mantids together and the next generation turned out _stronger._ They are growing at a very fast rate and are eating a LOT.


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## frogparty (Jul 16, 2012)

If you have good stock information it would be a real benefit to the hobby!!!! Id love to know more location specific info on mantis in the hobby


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## gripen (Jul 16, 2012)

frogparty said:


> If you have good stock information it would be a real benefit to the hobby!!!! Id love to know more location specific info on mantis in the hobby


Enter the IGM list. It is there for a reason.


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## frogparty (Jul 16, 2012)

yeah, but not everyone provides that information with the animals you get. We have the same thing for the dart frog hobby and it is sorely under used.


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## gripen (Jul 16, 2012)

frogparty said:


> yeah, but not everyone provides that information with the animals you get. We have the same thing for the dart frog hobby and it is sorely under used.


Yes that is exactly right. I really wish people paid more attention to it.


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## Sneaky123 (Jul 16, 2012)

What's IGM?


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## Rick (Jul 17, 2012)

frogparty said:


> I have plenty of proof in the form of college level invertebrate zoology education. I will post references. I will need to dig that book out of storage.
> 
> How closely do you keep track of your #s
> 
> Its not going to happen all at once right away, but you will begin to see a deterioration of the reproductive viability of your strain over the course of time. Other aspects will happen more slowly, but will be noticable. If youre only working with a strain a few gen removed from WC, then fine.... but a line perpetually inbred with no influx of new genetics will eventually deteriorate


Yes you should see effects. But exactly how long will this take with insects? I have bred mantids for more than eight generations without noticing a thing. I am willing to bet some of the species in culture right now are horribly inbred if no new stock is being imported. We've discussed the issue at length on here and I have yet to see anyone mention any ill effects that are noticeable. I am eagerly awaiting your references. When I took invert zoology we never even touched on the subject.


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## uralowl (Jul 17, 2012)

Thanks for all the replies, though I can't help but find it a bit amusing that this has turned into a debate, lol.

I'll still go ahead and interbreed my two mantids since I am planning to just sell off the ooth(s) anyway, Egyptian mantids are quite boring imho.


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## frogparty (Jul 17, 2012)

Ill try to get to my storage unit and grab the book this week. It was actually brought up in class to demonstrate how resistant to inbreeding they are, making them great colonized of new areas, but that after many generations without new genetics (F10 a least if I'm remembering correctly ) detrImental effects arise first in the form of loss of reproductive viability.


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## Ntsees (Jul 17, 2012)

I'm in a similar situation as Rick. Been breeding the same species for clearly over eight years (and still going) without introducing new blood. I don't see any problems with their health. Maybe it's just the species.


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## frogparty (Jul 17, 2012)

Whats your founding stock? All from same ooth? Or was there diversity to begin with? How many generations per year, an have you kept track of hatch out #s, # of ooths, and survival rates?

And what species?


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## frogparty (Jul 17, 2012)

Keepin track of #s is important here because even a 10% drop is statistically significant


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## rs4guy (Jul 17, 2012)

I think it also depends on the species. Orchids for example suffer effects of inbreeding much faster than others, like Chinese for example.


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## Ntsees (Jul 17, 2012)

frogparty said:


> Whats your founding stock? All from same ooth? Or was there diversity to begin with? How many generations per year, an have you kept track of hatch out #s, # of ooths, and survival rates?
> 
> And what species?


species: _Iris oratoria_

Founding stock: from the wild

Same ooth: yes

Diversity: I don't recall when I started to imbreeding them without any introduction but I do know that it's quite a few years though (I've only kept a record on the generations that dated to the very first mantid that started them all). There was introduction for a few years but then I stopped with the diversity.

Generations per year: one generation per year; they grow and hatch along with the seasons.

Hatch out numbers: don't count because it varies on the size of the ooth; eye-balling it, it appears to be the same as those hatched from a wild ooth.

# of ooths: depends how much I can gorge the female and how often she's willing to lay but at least 3 ooths before each female dies.

survival rates: If they didn't get eaten by their siblings, they survived.

Overall, I do agree that there should be a drop in their fitness and if there is, the change is probably too small for me to see. I'm just curious to see how long this inbreeding can last. It's a hobby and I'm not doing a scientific project on this and so as long as I don't stress out with very few hatching from the many ooths, I'm good.


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## Rick (Jul 18, 2012)

uralowl said:


> Thanks for all the replies, though I can't help but find it a bit amusing that this has turned into a debate, lol.
> 
> I'll still go ahead and interbreed my two mantids since I am planning to just sell off the ooth(s) anyway, Egyptian mantids are quite boring imho.


The bottom line is you're are fine to do so. Mostly hobbyists inbreed their mantids and as you can see it would take a long time to notice any effects.



frogparty said:


> Ill try to get to my storage unit and grab the book this week. It was actually brought up in class to demonstrate how resistant to inbreeding they are, making them great colonized of new areas, but that after many generations without new genetics (F10 a least if I'm remembering correctly ) detrImental effects arise first in the form of loss of reproductive viability.


That's interesting and makes sense. I wonder what the mutation rate is for insects.


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## Chivalry (Jul 18, 2012)

uralowl said:


> Thanks for all the replies, though I can't help but find it a bit amusing that this has turned into a debate, lol.
> 
> I'll still go ahead and interbreed my two mantids since I am planning to just sell off the ooth(s) anyway, Egyptian mantids are quite boring imho.


Huh. I think they're awesome, they're one of our fave species. You can put me on your list for ooth, I have all females and I'd really like to continue keeping them.

Inbred offspring may be weaker, but I'd wager they'll be stronger than my parthenogenic babies. I had pretty dismal survival rates on all but the first ooth.


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## agent A (Jul 18, 2012)

Chivalry said:


> Huh. I think they're awesome, they're one of our fave species. You can put me on your list for ooth, I have all females and I'd really like to continue keeping them.
> 
> Inbred offspring may be weaker, but I'd wager they'll be stronger than my parthenogenic babies. I had pretty dismal survival rates on all but the first ooth.


Interesting u should mention

Only 2 of the nymphs u sent me died

The rest r L5 and awesome!!

When I bred them a few years back I had trouble getting them to hatch...


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## massaman (Jul 30, 2012)

Inbreeding can be a horrible CURSE , or a marvelous BLESSING! It is an excellent tool to be used by conscientious breeders looking for "deeply rooted" recessives! Inbreeding brings these "hidden secrets" out of hiding, so they can be properly dealt with. The great stuff can then be "polished" and strengthened through tighter inbreeding on that particular mantis, the BAD stuff can be "washed-out" through identification &amp; elimination! Inbreeding on "a species" without extensive knowledge of the mantis themselves, their nymph mates, etc is without a doubt the most dangerous form of breeding! It is much safer to just outcross, or "type" breed! That is the reason that most novices are advised NOT to inbreed!!! Without a long-term breeding program in mind, and the resources and dedication to accomplish it , all such breedings are in vain! Worse of all, others will most likely continue to breed such mantis without having sufficient knowledge about their faults &amp; virtues, thereby compounding this problem even more! Inbreeding is a problem for all diploid animals. Diploid basically means you get a copy of every gene from each of your parents. For many of these genes you only require one working copy to exist and so the working one is said to be dominant over the broken one.

If one of your parents have a recessive copy (said to be carriers) than they have a 50% chance of passing that broken gene to their offspring but since the other parent probably has 2 working copies the child will get one working copy from the other parent.

If inbreeding happens there is a much higher chance that BOTH parents are carriers (have one broken copy) so they have a 25% chance of BOTH parents passing the broken gene to their offspring.

When you consider the vast number of genes in a human, animal or even insect it is very easy for at least a few important genes to be inherited broken from both parents if their is inbreeding.


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## Sneaky123 (Jul 30, 2012)

massaman said:


> Inbreeding can be a horrible CURSE , or a marvelous BLESSING! It is an excellent tool to be used by conscientious breeders looking for "deeply rooted" recessives! Inbreeding brings these "hidden secrets" out of hiding, so they can be properly dealt with. The great stuff can then be "polished" and strengthened through tighter inbreeding on that particular mantis, the BAD stuff can be "washed-out" through identification &amp; elimination! Inbreeding on "a species" without extensive knowledge of the mantis themselves, their nymph mates, etc is without a doubt the most dangerous form of breeding! It is much safer to just outcross, or "type" breed! That is the reason that most novices are advised NOT to inbreed!!! Without a long-term breeding program in mind, and the resources and dedication to accomplish it , all such breedings are in vain! Worse of all, others will most likely continue to breed such mantis without having sufficient knowledge about their faults &amp; virtues, thereby compounding this problem even more! Inbreeding is a problem for all diploid animals. Diploid basically means you get a copy of every gene from each of your parents. For many of these genes you only require one working copy to exist and so the working one is said to be dominant over the broken one.
> 
> If one of your parents have a recessive copy (said to be carriers) than they have a 50% chance of passing that broken gene to their offspring but since the other parent probably has 2 working copies the child will get one working copy from the other parent.
> 
> ...


You make some interesting points. I inbred my last generation of limbatas, and many of the eggs except for the ones from my favorite female turned out to be bitter disappointments (only third generation inbred) My male was unusually large, actually larger than all the females, and while inbreeding seems to have brought out some bad genes, it has also brought out good. The mantids from my fave females eggs are all strong, and one "monster mantis" is at L4 in two weeks. She also has interesting patterns. Can't wait to breed her.


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## Ntsees (Jul 31, 2012)

Sneaky123 said:


> ...are all strong, and one "monster mantis" is at L4 in two weeks. She also has interesting patterns. Can't wait to breed her.


What and how are the "interesting patterns" different from a normal limbata?


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## patrickfraser (Jul 31, 2012)

Incest is best, but your mantids to the test. :lol:


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## Necronlord44 (Aug 9, 2012)

it seems to me that the best way to breed your mantids without having to find or buy new ones would be to start with something like 5 mating pairs. This would yeild five ooths, from which a male and a female can be taken from both. As long as you can keep track of the family tree and systematically mate those least related to one another, I imagine you would be able to prevent most of the ill effects of inbreeding. This could also afford you some freedom to inbreed to an extent if there are certian traits you would like to see in all of your mantids.

The number of mating pairs may need to be larger, anyone have any thoughts on this?


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## frogparty (Aug 9, 2012)

you can perpetuate a species indefitiely with something like 12 unrelated founding members if you pick correctly


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## Bug Trader (Aug 9, 2012)

That may not be exact as far as mantids go due to the short life cycle, with the proper mgmt you would definitely benefit by starting with as much unrelated stock as you can and properly track it and try and hand out only unrelated offspring as a benefit to thehobby. I designed and built one of the managment trackers for the dart hobby which took the usefullness of the ZIMS setup but keyed in for frogs that produced large clutches and multiple clutches per year and Ed di use the zoo's work on starting with 24 unrelated lines in order to provide an indefinite supply of new blood but darts live a decade easy, mantids not so much.


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## MantidLord (Aug 9, 2012)

What if you mated females with multiple (unrelated) males? Does anyone know how related the nymphs would be from subsequent ootheca? Like is there first or last-sperm precedence with these guys or do the some males father a fraction of the offspring while other males father another fraction, etc. If that's the case, then inbreeding may not be as bad or show effects that soon, due to the fact that the siblings aren't fully related.


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## Rick (Aug 10, 2012)

I actually just read an article on this. The author had a good point in saying that it might actually be beneficial. The reasoning was that the mantids that survived in captivity to adult were obviously better adapted to captivity and therefore breeding them with another related mantis that also did well to survive in captivity will in effect produce offspring better suited to living in captivity.


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## Bug Trader (Aug 10, 2012)

Rick said:


> I actually just read an article on this. The author had a good point in saying that it might actually be beneficial. The reasoning was that the mantids that survived in captivity to adult were obviously better adapted to captivity and therefore breeding them with another related mantis that also did well to survive in captivity will in effect produce offspring better suited to living in captivity.


That does hold up as a valid point but for many the use of natural living vivs eases the transition as well as a push for more varied diets and such. The problem with linebreeding them is we dont know when it will hit a point of something showing up and while there is access to new blood we should push for that.


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## Mime454 (Aug 10, 2012)

Rick said:


> I actually just read an article on this. The author had a good point in saying that it might actually be beneficial. The reasoning was that the mantids that survived in captivity to adult were obviously better adapted to captivity and therefore breeding them with another related mantis that also did well to survive in captivity will in effect produce offspring better suited to living in captivity.


That may well be true, but we could run into a problem where a parasite or a virus could destroy an entire line of mantids because there is so little genetic diversity.


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## agent A (Aug 10, 2012)

Mime454 said:


> That may well be true, but we could run into a problem where a parasite or a virus could destroy an entire line of mantids because there is so little genetic diversity.


a parasite attacking captive bred animals??


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## Necronlord44 (Aug 10, 2012)

agent A said:


> a parasite attacking captive bred animals??


You would be surprised, a pathogen can come from just about anywhere. If a captive inbred population happens to be susceptible to it, the pathogen could very well ravage the entire population.

The insect zoo here at ISU ran into this problem with a species of walking stick.


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## Saebjorn9 (Aug 17, 2012)

At least where I am, mantises are very uncommon. Yet at least 100-200 hatch from each ooth. I'd assume since they're pretty rare, and yet a single ooth can introduce a ton of siblings into the same area. Inbreeding occurs on a pretty common basis.


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