inbreeding

[louvadeus]

Hello friends,

In your experience, does inbreeding (brother/sister mating) influence matings and female fecundity? Are Nymphs from inbred pairs weaker than outbred (crosses between mantids from different parents) ones? I would appreciate any report or comment. Thank you.

 

[infinity]

Not sure about mantids, but my experience with drosophila is no. Flies in the lab are specifically bred with their brothers and sisters to maintain a genetic *purity* and I know from experience that mating a brother with his sister and then letting all their offspring mate and mate and mate with each other does not cause any problems- I've been there for at least 10 generations and no observable difference has been observed.

Any idea for mantids?

 

[Rick]

Do a search! This has been discussed many times.

 

[louvadeus]

Thanks for the tip, Rick! I did a search and really found interesting information. I would just like to add a personal observation: In this genus I am working with (Parastagmatoptera), males make one moult less than females. This means that they became adults at least one month before the first female started to do its last moult. I had at first about twenty adult males. When the females were ripe to mate(about 1 month after the last moult) there were only about ten left. All the others died naturally, so I guess they were getting old. I got a few paired up and had some successful matings this far, but I left a large number of females uncoupled because there were no more males. This looks to me as a natural mechanism to avoid inbreeding, doesn´t it?

 

[Christian]

I think so! See Hymenopus thread.

Regards,

Christian