Incubation Diapause & Temperature Selection

[FFSTRescue]

Great information. Do the same theories hold true regarding gestation within viviparous species? Does a form of diapause even exist in viviparous species?

 

[Motherlode Chameleon]

Great information. Do the same theories hold true regarding gestation within viviparous species? Does a form of diapause even exist in viviparous species?

To my knowledge no. I have heard that mothers of live bearing species can delay birth until optimum conditions arrive. Do not quote me on that though.

 

[fluxlizard]

Flux...why would you want to shorten diapause? I think its best to just let nature take its course because manipulating what nature has set out might alter other things and you might end up with unhealthy babies.

Your guess that shortening would result in unhealthy babies is based on ?

I think that once we breed those lizards in captivity, dig up the eggs, put them in a container for incubation, we have already prevented nature from taking it's course.

My guess is that diapause is often unnaturally and unnecessarily long when using current methods of incubation.

My other guess is that development, once it occurs, is going to take about the same length of time no matter the length of diapause where no development is occurring, so the end result is the same as far as duration of development.

My other guess would be that the cold spell at the beginning would make the babies stronger. This is based on conversations with someone I know who knows a lot about bird incubation who has been trying to get me to cool my eggs for the last couple of decades prior to warming them for incubation claiming in poultry it makes the babies stronger. (I doubt he dreamed of 2-3 months though!). This guy really knows his stuff when it comes to birds, but I have always sort of brushed this advice off as unfounded in lizards and never wanted to risk eggs to find out, but after reading this- I don't know, it does kind of make sense to me now- if development is strongly triggered by temperature cues you should get a stronger development and then a stronger baby in the end.

I think current practices could possibly have development kind of weakly triggered and current results are more as an embryo survival effort type thing- egg breaks diapause and starts development without the stronger cues it would have in nature as a sort of effort just to try and survive even though the cues aren't saying it is time to do this or saying much of anything at all for that matter.

I'm not interested in shortening diapause per say (I'm a patient man and my main interest these days are mellers and I'm not sure they have a diapause anyway what with a 4 month incubation), but I am interested in consistent predictable results and strong hatchlings.

 

[Motherlode Chameleon]

Be careful if attempting a diapause, as some cooler temperature species do not require a diapause such as montane species from Cameroon while in other areas it may be required such as species from Eastern Madagascar for hatching success.

 

[kinyonga]

From what I've read, during diapause, cell growth and development are reversibly stopped or slowed. Since I know of no studies concerning chameleons that say its stopped and not slowed, I don't want to risk it.

 

[summoner12]

This is very interesting! Thank you very much Chris. I would give you rep, but I need to spread it around a bit more before I do it again.

I now have a incubator that can cool, so with my next clutch I might try lower temps at first.