Can you breed mantids with their siblings?

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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.

 
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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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?

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

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

 
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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.
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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.

 
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.
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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...

 
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 & 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 & 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.

 
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 & 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 & 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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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.

 
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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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.

 
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.

 
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.

 
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.
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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.

 
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.
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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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