DWARF Leopard Geckos???

I think that people are not looking at this correctly..... It is not a simple recessive gene and it is not co/dom gene and it is not a selectively bred color morph..... It is a physical and a genetic defect..... Not growing to adult size makes you a big target for alot more predators..... The resessive genes we have in captivity have a much better chance of living in the wild and there are such things as locality spacific recessive genes..... This is where the wild type gene or normal looking animals have been taken over by the recessive gene because that particular recessive look was better suited for that particular location...... And there have been numerous albino adult animals in numerous species found in the wild doing just fine..... Here is an example..... Sulfer water monitors are found on a couple of small islands in indonesia..... They are all yellow with slight gray banding...... This is the only color form of V. salvator living on these islands..... When a sulfer is bred to a normal water monitor, all of the babies are normal looking.... Who is to say that there are not populations of these recessive leopard gecko morphs living in the wild......

I'm curious as to why these scientist said it would be unethical. I guess I must be missing the difference between that and giantism. (I probably will have to re-read all the posts - I skipped some of the responses).

Good topic.

Stina,
Why is it that when Marcia said somthing it was good info but when I said the same thing 8 pages before you argued with me???? And in the same post you still had to try to knock down what I said..... Your argument is this..... They can hide easier..... Yeah but they have to spend evey day of their life as juvinile sized adults..... And I was talking about gentic dwarfism and I clearly stated this in my post..... We were not talking about hypothetical leos..... These are actual leos.... This is another reason why your argument holds no water..... Yes babies obviously make it to adult hood but it is a very small % of the animals that make it out of the eggs..... Evolution is something that happens over thousands of years..... We are talking about an animal that is born defective..... Animals do not evolve into genetic dwarfs...... Genetic dwarfs are picked off by predators because they are smaller than normal leos and cant get away at the same rate because of their unproportionate body shape..... They are not suited to live in the wild.... As harsh as it may sound it is true....

Besides all of this, I know I would be pretty pissed off if my females gave birth to a bunch of tiny,misshapen babies due to some wannabenewmorphbreeder who thought it was a good idea to propogate this defect into the captive leo poulation.... I know for a fact that the huge majority of breeders feel the same way......

Albinism IS a genetic defect in the VAST majority of species...the only time it does not affect viability is when there are no predators or the environment would not make them stick out more. Besides that, albinism affects more than just skin pigment...very often it affects light sensitivity and can affect other things as well. An animals that is light sensitive is much more likely to get caught than one that is not. Also...genetic defects ARE genes that work like any other and may very well be recessive or co-dom...like giant...giant leos do have a genetic defect causing them to grow larger...its as simple as that...it IS a genetic defect! It just doesn't affect viability (at least no one has shown it to) in captivity.

Anyway...back to the topic that I was discussing before that had absolutely nothing to do with whether anything was a defect............I was being COMPLETELY hypothetical...there is NO WAY you can say that leopard geckos that are smaller than normal, with no other physiological affects, and are still able to breed and lay eggs normally, would be at a disadvantage in the wild...Yes...there may be more smaller predators...but as I said, they would be able to hide more easily, and they would be harder to see...because there are more variables than number of predators involved it is IMPOSSIBLE to say whether smaller leos would be at a disadvantage!

“I appreciate you coming on this forum, James! You are obviously well-read and articulate... a welcome change from the "other" forum. It is my hope that you will become an active participant in Fauna's Forums.”

Thank you for the kind words, and the invite, but I already do come here (fauna forums) on occasion. I just have no reason to come here to the Leopard Gecko forum. Actually, maybe I am wrong with that thought. I noticed on the “Who are you” thread that there were some very cute Gecko girls there (Olivia, Shannan, and kelli) By the way Kelli, you do not appear to have a lazy eye. If you did, would that be a genetic defect? Seriously, I just do not have the time to come here. Maybe I will check out the Rosy Forum here or the Chuckwalla forum (if they have one) when I get some spare time.

“In my second email correspondence with you, I invited you to come and participate in this thread, and you said "No thanks, I have other things to do."

That is correct, and I did have other things to do, and I did not get all of them done. I simply did not have the time. I have other responsibilities.

“Perhaps if you had come here to this thread at that time, your integrity would not have been attacked.”
Interesting you say that. You blame me for others bad behavior. I am not surprised. Dare I say I should not have been attacked whether or not I came here.

Also, you need to read my response again. When I said: (You have absolutely no way of knowing how they came to be that way. It was just speculation on your part. I ask you again do you have any experience working with this like from Julie Bergman?) I was not responding to you. I was responding to Justyn…

“I am also aware of 3 other breeders (who's name I will not mention out of respect) that worked with these dwarfs, and ALL of them came to the conclusion that this is a very undesirable trait. Why? Because the vast majority of them could not reproduce, the ones that did died from dystocia (egg binding). The few offspring that did make it, were 'normal' sized geckos, “

It would be futile to comment on anyone else’s breeding experiences with dwarfs. There are way too many unknown variables that have been left out.

“and the only breeder I know that bred those normal offspring did indeed wind up producing a few dwarfs.”

Well, you can now add Chris to your list as well. She did produce dwarfs from that one female that she got from Julie. She also had none of the problems that you have just mentioned.

”Now, that being said, these preliminary breeding experiments and discussions with Prof. Michelle Hawkins at UC Davis Exotics Dept., have given me enough evidence that dwarfism in Leopard Geckos is indeed a genetic defect.”

I will agree with you as long as you agree to the use of that wordage in regard to the color morphs that you produce. Either way. It is most likely genetic as you said. However, this is true for the male as well. He is not just small. Remember that female was bred to a normal female.

“and is not something that most ethical and responsible breeders would like to see infiltrating into the general population.”

There you go again. Now you are just speaking for MOST breeders. I guess that is a start.

“As for this defect occurring in the wild... I am most certain that it occurs! However, based on what I do know about these dwarfs, the chances of them reproducing this defect into their wild populations eventually becomes naturally culled by nature.”

That exact statement could also be applied to albinos and other color mutations in the wild. This is not a hard concept. If you only keep local specific Leopard Geckos, that are true to their locality wild type counterparts I would welcome your criticism, otherwise it just seems, well...a little hypocritical. As I said to Jeremy, you are either a purest, or you are not. You cannot be both. Thank you for your thoughts.

Gregg, I am no way defending dwarfed leos...and 8 pages ago you were not saying the same thing as Marcia...or at least that's sure not what it looked like to me! I was speaking of hypothetical leos the whole time...I did not know the genetics of the leos in question and when I posted my first response involving my hypothetical leos I made it CLEAR that I was speaking of animals that could breed normally and were normal in every other way but size. I said it CLEARLY in my first response involving them!

I'm curious as to why these scientist said it would be unethical

Monte, I am the one that's saying it would be unethical, not the scientists. They love to experiment with things of this nature, and I do not even line breed! LOL! What I am trying to say is, that based on the results of the breeders that worked with the 'dwarf' leopard geckos and the information collected from the scientists, the vast majority of the females died as a result of the inability to lay their eggs. This is a horrible way for these geckos to die, and it tells me that they were not meant to reproduce in nature and are thereby naturally culled. I feel that breeders have a responsibility to try to improve the species... not perpetuate the faults that could potentially jeopardize the gene pool.

Here is my first post to this thread..... Read it again incase you missed it.....


Here is what I think..... First on to the mutation thing..... Not all mutations are bad..... Infact genes mutate all the time in order to addapt to changing conditions and alot of mutations are found in wild animals that are thriving just fine in the wild..... There are locality spacific color morphs and locality spacific recessive genetics..... Now we all know now that the giants are not recessive..... They can very well be an example of a larger subspecies of Leopard gecko..... Also the hypos on the market now are the result of wild caught adult hypos, years ago...... Once in captivity selective breeding refined this morph...... There have been albino hets caught in the wild.... How did those imported albino hets become hets???? Obviously some genetic mutations do fine in the wild and live to breeding age....

Now onto the Dwarf leos...... Dwarfism is a defect that is not wanted in captive collections and is not wanted in nature..... Dwarf animals are way more likely to have problems giving birth and staying alive in the wild because now they have many more predators that will pick them off....

Ethics??? No one here can really talk about ethics..... Ethics are rules made up be people..... Nature does not fallow our rules..... It is not ethical for a person to run up and bite a cow on the neck because we get hungry, but in the wild some animals need to do this in order to live...... Is it ethical to strip an animal from the wild and confine it to a cage for the rest of its life???? Is it ethical to inbreed a species 2, 5, 10, 15 generations???? The funny thing is that ethics are unwritten rules made up by us and in some way, shape, or form we ALL break them somehow.... Just something else to think about here....

Now I in no way feel it would do any good to continue BAD genetics like dwarfism.... There is no benefit to being a dwarf....

Actually Gregg if I'm remembering correctly....about 95% of all mutations are fatal or detrimental. The vast majority of mutations in the wild are bad, however occasionally one will pop up that will benefit the species. Albinism is a VERY detrimental disorder in the wild...but it can occasionally be found in hets (or very rarely a VERY lucky albino) because it is recessive...and therefore extremely difficult to altogether eliminate from the gene pool. As far as dwarfism, I'm not really going to say anything specifically because I don't know enough about it...however I don't know how you can say automatically that dwarf leos would automatically have more predators that would pick them off...if they are just small but still normal physiologically otherwise...I would think they would be able hide more easily and be less likely to be caught. The detrimentality of dwarfism in the wild would depend on the cause of it and what other aspects of physiology are affected. Just a note...when I say dwarfism refering to the leos I am simply meaning smaller than normal leos....not necessarily genetic dwarfism.

And that was my first response to you....like I said...I made it clear what I was speaking about

James, the same can not be said for other color morphs..... Like I have said a few times there are locality spacific recessive animals in the wild..... And there have been plenty of wild caught adult color morphs in reptiles..... No dwarfs though..... Yeah I know, there are dwarf retics...... Unfortuanly for this particular argument they are not genetic dwarfs.... They are smaller in size because of where they live and the availablity of food...... The same goes for the dwarf king cobras.....