FaunaClassifieds - View Single Post - One eyed albino boa, should I kill him?
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Old 10-27-2006, 10:30 PM   #32
Mokele
Quote:
And any genetic involvement is far more complex than simple Mendelian genetics.
Well, not strictly, in that it will still adhere to Mendel's laws.

Part of the issue is developmental stability. During development, things can go wrong for lots of reasons, genetic and environmental, but the developmental process is actually pretty good about tolerating these fluctuations. But if the inbred animal has just a few too many bad genes, or whatever environmental cause was just a bit too intense, then the tolerances are exceeded, and the developmental process is disrupted.

What this means is that not all offspring will be deformed, and the extent of deformity may even depend on environmental factors (since adding in environmental and genetic disruptions could push the developmental process past its tolerance) to a limited extent.

However, the more these animals and their sibs are bred, the worse it's going to get, as inbreeding causes deleterious mutations to continually accumulate.

Quote:
2) it further increases the likelihood that somebody will see the chance at $$ and breed it anyway, spreading the weak genes and exacerbating the problem
I'd like to add to this something else: Even though the genetically damaged individuals will have a reduced lifespan, boas still live a *long* time. You might trust that the person you sell it to won't breed it, but what about the next owner, and the one after, and so on and so forth? Pretty soon it's the Six Degrees of One-eyed-snake, and someone will just dismiss it as caused by fluctuating temperatures during development and try to breed it.

Mokele