Just A Little Challange to the thinking of inbreeding as bad...

[agent A]

ok so there has been a lot of debate about whether or not inbreeding is bad for our animals

obviously with vertebrates it's not a good idea

but we do a lot of inbreeding of other stuff

feeder insects for example

feeder roaches and fruitflies surely inbreed constantly because in the colony they get closer and closer related each generation as they continuosly mate with the individuals they live with

and yet we still have hundreds of feeder insects available to be used at our disposal

when we start a new fruitfly culture we merely add 20-30 or so adults from an existing culture, a culture which could be from a long line of cultures where no new bloodlines or individuals were added

and we know the fruitfly genome very well and know how to mess with it and mutate it

my audobon book on insects even says surviving male fruitflies mate with their daughters

we can't say no inbreeding happens in a fruitfly culture because it certainly does and i have no problems with the flies, as long as they have food, they r set

and we know about the genes of fruitflies better than we know mantises, so do we really know how inbreeding can affect mantises?

i dont fully understand all this so if i am wrong about this feeder insect thing let me know, this topic is just meant to get peeps thinking

please let me know wat u think of my theory...

thanx

 

[massaman]

yes too much interbreeding can make a species sterile or could be worse off and maybe produce smaller ooths and what not!

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!

 

[agent A]

well this is interesting massaman

i would think that if both parents are healthy (genetically speaking) then when their gametes match up they will produce a normal offspring regardless of how closely related they are

if they are both the same species their DNA is almost identical anyways, so theoretically if a zygote is made and has the proper chromosomes it will be healthy

but i've heard stuff like inbreeding doesnt allow for new dna to enter the pool and then genetic variability is non existent and then the offspring wont have the means to fight off new stressors in their environment or have new dna to fix any errors in their dna which kind of makes since

perhaps i just dont yet have enough knowledge about this stuff to grasp the concept

thanx for the thorough explanation though B)

 

[frogparty]

You start a ff culture with 100+ individuals. Not all those are related. So right away you have the possibility of dozens of pairings of unrelated individuals. Especially if you do it the right, and use flies from 2 or more ciltures to start new ones. Take all those F1 pairings and see that there are many many instances for F2 offspring that are from totally unrelated pairings. Then think about the fact that all those pairings can result in a combination of related and unrelated pairings. Then consider that production comes in "waves" from ff cultures, and that a typical culture which expires after a month doesnt really have that many generational #s come from it, and youll see that the amount of inbreeding potential total isnt that high

 

[massaman]

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.

 

[frogparty]

well this is interesting massaman

i would think that if both parents are healthy (genetically speaking) then when their gametes match up they will produce a normal offspring regardless of how closely related they are

if they are both the same species their DNA is almost identical anyways, so theoretically if a zygote is made and has the proper chromosomes it will be healthy

but i've heard stuff like inbreeding doesnt allow for new dna to enter the pool and then genetic variability is non existent and then the offspring wont have the means to fight off new stressors in their environment or have new dna to fix any errors in their dna which kind of makes since

perhaps i just dont yet have enough knowledge about this stuff to grasp the concept

thanx for the thorough explanation though B)

Take a genetics course, please. Even highschool biology should get you on the way to better understanding the basics of genetics

 

[agent A]

Take a genetics course, please. Even highschool biology should get you on the way to better understanding the basics of genetics

not in my town :lol:

in 9th grade they had us taking 7th grade latin

i took bio last year but never learned abt broken genes and stuff

heck, we didnt even do dihybrid crosses on a punnet square

 

[rs4guy]

Not to mention as a FF culture dwindles, smaller FF's are produced. I have an inkling that that is at the very least partly due to inbreeding......

 

[agent A]

Not to mention as a FF culture dwindles, smaller FF's are produced. I have an inkling that that is at the very least partly due to inbreeding......

i thought it was from malnourishment...

 

[Norlin]

I would think it's from malnourishment as well. Consider that even though only a few generations occur in a FF culture, many take a few FF from that single culture to start their next culture and then repeat the cycle over and over. So while they're not in the same container, they're still from the same "culture" and if no diversification is introduced, I would consider these fully inbred.

 

[Mime454]

From what I've read, the danger with inbreeding is the expressing of leathal recessives in an organisms phenotype. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_alleles After enough generations of inbreeding, the effects can be bred out, even in humans, after each generation, the odds of lethal recessives expressing themselves gets lower and lower.

 

[Mime454]

The other danger is a bit more easily wiped out by parasites or viruses, because they have the same Histocompatibility jeans. This problem is intensified the longer the inbreeding goes on.

 

[patrickfraser]

The other danger is a bit more easily wiped out by parasites or viruses, because they have the same Histocompatibility jeans. This problem is intensified the longer the inbreeding goes on.

That sounds like an expensive name brand of jeans. Are they really tight or something?

 

[Mime454]

That sounds like an expensive name brand of jeans. Are they really tight or something?

Using siri dictation to type, not such a good idea in retrospect.

 

[Rick]

It is good young members are thinking of these subjects and obviously googling for some information. Genetics is a fascinating subject and I encourage you to keep digging. There should be plenty of research on fruit fly genetics to be found. Try google scholar as well. I didn't have the internet as a kid so take advantage. It surprises me to even see you mention a punnett square at sixteen years old. And like somebody mentioned, as soon as you can take a genetics course I highly recommend it.

 

[Ntsees]

I remember one of my proffessors mentioning that most plants inbreed often (flower self-fertilizing) and that they pretty much inbred themselves out of the lethal genes (the seedlings with the lethal genes never grew). I'm not going to say whether he's right or not but just wanted to throw that out there. Also, in regards to inbreeding in animals, just look at our dog breeds or foster farm chickens and look at how far back they date to (from that point in history to the present = that's how long they've been inbred). From the beginning, we've never had a bulldog or a white poultry chicken. The result of those animals were due to inbreeding because those traits were selected for (favored). To strengthen that trait, they would have to be bred to related animals because the related animals, even if it didn't expressed the phenotype, carried the gene. If they were not bred to a related animal, that favored trait would probably not be expressed or if expressed, it would be expressed to a lower degree. I do agree with inbreeding and lethal genes and all, but there's also what I just mentioned.

 

[Rick]

I remember one of my proffessors mentioning that most plants inbreed often (flower self-fertilizing) and that they pretty much inbred themselves out of the lethal genes (the seedlings with the lethal genes never grew). I'm not going to say whether he's right or not but just wanted to throw that out there. Also, in regards to inbreeding in animals, just look at our dog breeds or foster farm chickens and look at how far back they date to (from that point in history to the present = that's how long they've been inbred). From the beginning, we've never had a bulldog or a white poultry chicken. The result of those animals were due to inbreeding because those traits were selected for (favored). To strengthen that trait, they would have to be bred to related animals because the related animals, even if it didn't expressed the phenotype, carried the gene. If they were not bred to a related animal, that favored trait would probably not be expressed or if expressed, it would be expressed to a lower degree. I do agree with inbreeding and lethal genes and all, but there's also what I just mentioned.

But one current problem with pure breed dogs are certain diseases and conditions common to the breed BECAUSE of it.

 

[Ntsees]

But one current problem with pure breed dogs are certain diseases and conditions common to the breed BECAUSE of it.

Yes, you are correct. I was thinking about it too while writing but forgot to mention that. And also to add (that everyone already knows) that if the breed was bred to another breed, the offspring would be overall "stronger". Even though pure breeds have certain diseases and conditions, they are still wanted because they are not ~malformed (different looking than from what the breed should look like) and can still eat run etc. (basically, although there are problems, the dog breed still has not yet come to a point where it would die off as a breed).

 

[Precarious]

Personally, I think the risks are low with insects, but that's just my instinctual feeling.