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inbreeding *POLL*

do you feel that inbreeding leopard geckos is wrong?

  • NO! im all for it! some of the top leopard gecko breeders have been doing it for decades.

    Votes: 9 21.4%

  • maybe eventually but i doubt the gene pool is shallow enough to worry about it yet.

    Votes: 6 14.3%

  • only when phisical defects occur do i feel the need to outcross.

    Votes: 3 7.1%

  • i dont and wont practice inbreeding myself but i feel it is not hurting anything..

    Votes: 3 7.1%

  • i outcross siblings to nonrelated mates in order to preserve genetic diversity.

    Votes: 18 42.9%

  • crossing even distantly related geckos is unethical.

    Votes: 2 4.8%

  • i wont buy albinos fancy morphs because i feel to much inbreeding has already occured within them.

    Votes: 1 2.4%
  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .
Hey Gregg, the end of the world is near! I actually removed all the sand and the ceramic tiles from my cages! :eek2:
When I bought my house and I moved all those dang cages I had to take everything out & clean it. I put all of the ceramic tiles into a square cooler and I couldn't lift the thing! I also noticed that the glass doors in the lowest cages had trouble sliding smoothly...too much weight was causing some sagging. So I had to lose some weight. I put the sticky tiles in and my famous "fake rock". Besides I don't want the sand on MY carpet! LOL
I will be posting pics when my camera comes in.
 
Chad, I can't really pick one of the options either. It's not because none of them are accurate for my view, it's just that it's not that simple for me. I've raised everything from dogs and birds to snakes and fish, and have seen consequences from even line-breeding. I'm pretty new to breeding leopard geckos, but it's my opinion that inbreeding doesn't have as negative results as some other organisms. [so far] For example, the first lutino cockatiels were inbred in order to establish them as a commonly available morph, and now they ALL have bald patches on their heads behind their crests. There are other problems with the lutinos as well, such as their lacking the ability to 'lock' their feet around a perch while sleeping, and their comparatively weak feather casings that make them more prone to blood feathers. I don't think anyone can claim if it's from inbreeding or if it's a physical flaw directly related to the actual trait that subtracts their melanin.

Anyway, I'll shut up and just say that I think leopard geckos should be out-crossed as much as possible to avoid potential problems associated with inbreeding... BECAUSE inbreeding to intensify a DESIRED trait can also intensify an UNDESIRED trait.
 
i wont buy albinos fancy morphs because i feel to much inbreeding has already occured within them.

would you want an inbreed dog? dont be fooled by line bred or other fancy nick names
 
While I do not have any experience dealing with inbred leos, I have bred dwarf hamsters all the way to expressing three recessive traits (aappdd). From my experience even breeding siblings together does not seriously pose any danger of deformities. This may be simply a reflection of how genetically healthy the captive dwarf hamster lines are. Of course, I'd rather have the peace of mind that comes from breeding complete strangers, but for the purposes of most breeders it is too difficult to find desirable individuals. The only crossing you want to avoid is mottled X mottled (MoMo). Mottling is dominant so you only need one copy to express it. Having two copies, (a 25% chance of occurring), causes the pups to be completely devoid of pigment and lack eyes and teeth. These pups usually die in the womb, or quickly after birth. I have very little knowledge about leo genetics, but I would wonder if maybe the deformities that seem to come from high-level morph crosses is due to having two copies of a certain allele. I don't fault the great breeders we have here for any deformities in their leos and I don't think they should feel 'wrong' for inbreeding if its done sensibly.
 
line-breeding and inbreeding are NOT the same thing...inbreeding is breeding animals that are within...I think its 3 generations of each other (according to geneticists), and line-breeding is breeding animals with more distant relations. ALL dog breeds have at least some line-breeding...pretty much any pure-bred dog will have line-breeding in its background...and a lot of mutts too if they have any purebred dogs in their background (although it will be farther back in their pedigree and will therefore reduce the effects of line-breeding). What inbreeding and line-breeding do is increase the level of homozygosity in the animals, and bring out both "desireable" and "undesireable" traits... inbreeding just increases homozygosity more quickly. outcrossing increases heterozygosity and decreases the chance of both "desireable" and "undesireable" traits. Sorry if I'm rambling and pretty much everyone already knows this...lol At any rate...the point of inbreeding/line-breeding purposely is to bring out "desireable" traits...the downside is that you also bring out "undesireable" traits which is where outcrossing comes in to try and remove and diminish undesireable traits. Also inbreeding can be a way to determine whether or not an animal carries an "undesireable" trait...though that isn't necessarily an ethical usage of inbreeding... At any rate...I don't know...I personally believe that some inbreeding and line-breeding is ok, outcrossing just needs to be used to minimize the chances of "undesireable" traits popping up. The only way to improve polygenic traits over a non-ridiculous amount of time, is to line-breed and/or inbreed...without these breeding "methods" tangerine, line-bred snows, line-bred hypos, etc. simply wouldn't exist and it would be extremely difficult to begin producing any newly "discovered" recessive traits. I dunno...anyway...sorry that so long and boring and you probably all already know it...lol I know I rambled...
 
Pure bred dogs have indeed been line bred. But in Dogs, single generation inbreeding results in defects due to the line breeding. Defects in the geckos how ever are desirable. Hypo, is a defect, albino is a defect, giants. Undesirable defects include no eyelids, kinked eye lids, kinked tails. Leopard geckos are the weakest pet reptiles genetically because there has been little to no imports for some years.
 
Vince said:
Leopard geckos are the weakest pet reptiles genetically because there has been little to no imports for some years.
Click to expand...
Vince, thats a pretty extreme generality there.
 
do you disagree that leopard geckos are the most inbred herp in the US? If so then what do you think is? Maybe bearded dragons becuse you can never get fresh blood lines, maybe from euro.
 
hey vince,
you do realize that there are alot of morphs in many breeds of dog. weimerwriners (i dont know how to spell it) are even bred for eye colors. doberman pincers come in fawn, black, red, blue, and albino.

in dog breeding pure breed dogs are looked at with respect while any level of of outcrossing to other breeds is considered a mutt. even if they were similar breeds and strong robust animals.

try entering a chow-mation into a dog show...youll be shown the door to the soundtrack of roaring laughter.
 
Vince said:
do you disagree that leopard geckos are the most inbred herp in the US?
Click to expand...
What I think is that you can't pick a statistic like that out of a hat and post it like it was fact.
 
diablohogs said:
hey vince,
you do realize that there are alot of morphs in many breeds of dog. weimerwriners (i dont know how to spell it) are even bred for eye colors. doberman pincers come in fawn, black, red, blue, and albino.

in dog breeding pure breed dogs are looked at with respect while any level of of outcrossing to other breeds is considered a mutt. even if they were similar breeds and strong robust animals.

try entering a chow-mation into a dog show...youll be shown the door to the soundtrack of roaring laughter.
Click to expand...


Your analogy is flawed. Chow-mation? that would be like a Fat-Leo Tail.
 
Well...most of the traits we see in dog breeds are because of "defects." At any rate...It's all a matter of responsible breeding...leopard geckos may not have had many imports...however many breeders (at least those around here) are responsible enough to start their own lines with at least fairly unrelated animals which means that getting animals from breeders with established lines makes it possible to keep heterozygosity fairly high and prevent undesireable traits from popping up too much. Obviously they pop up occasionally...but it could be much worse if people were generally less responsible and didn't care about kinked tails or eyelid deformities and whatnot. I dunno...maybe I'm being too optimistic...lol I do agree however that some wild caught animals should be brought into the captive bloodlines sometime soon.
 
leaftail said:
What I think is that you can't pick a statistic like that out of a hat and post it like it was fact.
Click to expand...


I have seen alot of kink tailed patternless leos that would say something differnt
 
Vince said:
Your analogy is flawed. Chow-mation? that would be like a Fat-Leo Tail.
Click to expand...
Wrong. Not even close. Chows and dalmations are the same genus and species. Fat-tails and leos are not even the same genus.
 
Vince said:
I have seen alot of kink tailed patternless leos that would say something differnt
Click to expand...
Doesnt make them statistically "the weakest".
 
Vince said:
do you disagree that leopard geckos are the most inbred herp in the US?
Click to expand...
Vince,

Did you read my post in this thread on Bredl's Pythons? If not then you should because I will wager there were and are more founder leopard geckos in the US than Bredl's. Way more. So even though there are certainly way more leos around than there are Bredl's, there was way more diversity in the genetics to start with.
 
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