Line Breeding

Provancha65

Provancha65

Avid Member
Before I enrage anyone into thinking I participate in allowing sibling copulation or anything of that nature, I would just like to say this post is merely an inquiry into the subject of 'responsible' line breeding. I recently procured a female that is a distant relation to one of my panthers; they share a common point of origin in each other's bloodline's. That common point of origin happens to be a Male that is 3 generations separated from my female and 4 generations separated from my male. From this point forward their blood lines have been completely divergent, which means my female exhibits a 12.5% genetic similarity to the male of origin and my male a 6.25% similarity, which should mean that their offspring would exhibit a 9.4% expression of the origin male's genetic traits. That being said, and the raw statistics aside, would a 90+% genetic variation be considered an ethical/viable pairing? Please share your thoughts.
*Also, if I made a formulaic or mathematical error please let me know and address the issue accordingly.
 
I think we would be surprised at how often breeders do breed into lines that have common roots. I think some is unintentional, and some is not. When I was with the CIN, there were breeders who bred "relatives," but the responsible ones documented and did not bred brother and sister, father and daughter etc.

The Quads were plentiful as WC in the 90's, so there was no need to inter breed, but my guess is it will be difficult with the limited gene pool to not bred back into the line at some point now, unless new blood comes in. Laurie and company will try I am sure to keep fresh blood, but we may not see WC Quads again...
I would say it is a good possibility that in the wild, a brother approaching a sister for breeding, is not uncommon.
I would have no problem buying a cham from the gene pool you describe.:D

Nick
 
That's such a small percent. I believe that many species of wild caught probably have a higher percentage of interrelated genetics than that due to small ranges.
 
avoid

I hate to crash a party, but I still wouldn't breed them. I have gone through exhaustive measures to make sure mine are not related or cannot be traced together at all. I had dna swabs on some at the beginning. Think of the future generations. Just one or two new pairings, significantly adds to the gene pool.
 
testing

I did them on my jax and first two veils. It was ubber expensive. It was in Maryland, I believe. They were thrown out by mistake, when I threw out some of my kids old school work. I had years of it in a pile, & mistakenly set some old homeworks down on top of it. Which led me to the three journals I keep today. I did it because I was worried about their parents. I didn't know where to buy except a couple places locally. After reading about the original 32 (36 depending on source) from Hawaii. I didn't want to do more harm than good. Your right in your post you started, they do come back closely related. I was getting mine from the same source pretty much, no matter where I purchased. I wanted to be sure I wasn't mating brothers and sisters or cousins. It can be alarming. But as with tigers, komodos, etc... They have to survive extinction somehow & doubt the wildlife projects are as concerned with chams. ($400 including S&H both ways) Ed at Kammerflage can tell you, now I buy one sex from him (usually male) & another sex from someone like FL. That way to insure diversity. Opposite ends of the country make me feel better, & yes i am aware of fedex & ups. (typing on phone sux)
 
junglefries, thanks for the DNA testing info.

I was just really curious because the only time I know it to be super critical is if they are endangered and in a breeding program for conservation or possible reintroduction to the wild. I don't know if there are any professional chameleon breeders that would take the time or expense to do DNA testing, except maybe for Parsoni, so I was surprised that you had done this for your veiled and jacksoni.
 
In the wild a successful male's offspring over 4 generations could easily account for up to 500 chameleons in a population. I couldn't be convinced this pairing is either unnatural, or a bad idea if both are from strong healthy lines...
 
mike fisher

When i first read about the jax, i was freaked out. I was very confused on how everyone's chams came from those 32 (36). How did they not have 6 legs or an arm growing out of their head. It really weighed on me. Also, having an inheritance at the time didn't hurt matters. Now i know that some wc habe been introduced to help, but still even to this day it bothers me. Everyone has opinions or beliefs, that weren't taught to us or learned. It is just how your particular brain thinks about something. For me, I guess making so many jokes about having a relative from WV got into my subconcious somehow. Or maybe it's just that i am a stick in the mud. When your own parents tell you your too straight laced or have no sense of humor, I should probably loosen up. I either care too much about something or couldn't give a sh%*. There is no middle for me. like i said any questions, fire away. I'll be more than happy to answer. God I am weird, @ least I know it.
 
I wrote up a long response to this thread but have deleted it as it may offend some people which is not my intention. With that being said, why is it that every time one of these threads come up that someone feels the need to say "they are gonna come out with 6 limbs or an arm growing out of its head", has there been even one documented case of this in chameleons? Has anyone seen this happen with their own two eyes? I see this a lot on the forums, members sometimes even senior members will regurgitate information that they have read somewhere claiming it to be true with no proof and some newbie will come along and read it and take it as fact. I personally feel that responsible line breeding is a non-issue and is practiced in breeding many of the animals that we see today. You have a higher chance of having some recessive genes appear, but not all recessive genes are bad.
 
my thoughts:

I would avoid all in-breeding (including line breeding) if at all possible. if it is at all possible to get breeding partners that are less related, do that, so that you are not intentionally producing genetically inferior offspring.

If getting unrelated animals is not whatsoever possible, what you are proposing isnt unreasonable.


there are previous threads on the line / inbreeding topic. You might want to read them, as some of the info is useful (amongst some ranting / ignorance)
https://www.chameleonforums.com/true-27168/
 
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I’d be interested to hear if anyone actually has evidence of weakened chameleons due to line (or in) breeding.* I would not recommend it and would do it myself only in the worst case scenario (if quads just never come in again, for example).* But I also believe there is much more emotion around it than is warranted.* Here are the best data points I can muster:
1)***** Jacksonii in Czech Republic. I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend…that there were a few jacksonii that were bred a number of generations for ten years with no ill effects reported.* As this was during the cold war there was not much going in and out of the country.* I have none of this substantiated and would welcome any of our European friends that know more about this situation.
2)***** Calyptratus birth defects.* Not long ago we had talk of inbreeding defects being found in calyptratus babies.* I did not get to see these in person, but some of the descriptions of what were wrong sounded a lot like MBD which would be people (consciously or inadvertently) using an emotional hot button issue to explain away poor husbandry.* Once again, I am very interested if anyone has solid information on this situation.
3)***** Purposeful line breeding.* I have a breeder friend who, through careful in and out breeding, was able to remove a genetic defect from his bloodline.* His chameleons are some of the strongest I have seen so I can personally verify that a controlled purposeful program can have positive effects.

I agree with DanSB, a more widespread DNA testing program in chameleons would probably bring up more surprises than we expect.* Your approach of one from Kammerflage and one from the wild is about as good as you can do without doing DNA testing ahead of purchase.* I would be very interested if DNA testing could differentiate between pardalis locales.* I do not know enough about it to know if that is a reasonable expectation.

Question to the forums:* I acknowledge the subject is very emotional, but let’s put that aside and get down to real experience. **Have any of you had concrete experience with inbreeding – positive or negative?
 
I can't find the thread with this in it but I recall Jim Flaherty reporting near 100% die offs on a few accidental sibling pairings at his operation. I would classify this as the only reliable case I've heard about where inbreeding can have negative consequences.

Looking at this theoretically with an understanding of genetics it simply can't be bad unless there is some horrible recessive genetics in the genome. Which when you think about the isolated locales and limited stock that logically started them (especially in panther island locales) it seems unreasonable that such a trait exists.

I'm not well versed in chameleon evolution or historic migrations though so I could be very wrong.
 
DanSB said:
I can't find the thread with this in it but I recall Jim Flaherty reporting near 100% die offs on a few accidental sibling pairings at his operation. I would classify this as the only reliable case I've heard about where inbreeding can have negative consequences.
Click to expand...

Wow, that sounds a bit extreme! I would suspect there is a piece of the story that is missing on this one.
 
DeremensisBlue said:
Wow, that sounds a bit extreme! I would suspect there is a piece of the story that is missing on this one.
Click to expand...

I found the thread!

https://www.chameleonforums.com/inbreeding-84252/

I'm not sure if more was involved or not. Jim is very experienced and has probably bred more panthers than most have ever seen... I am not qualified to judge if he is prone to exaggeration or not so I won't take it for fact, but just good evidence.
 
Thanks for finding that thread. I'll not dispute Jim's claims. He knows what he is talking about. But I will say that if inbreeding always produced dead babies or slit eyed deformities then there would not be much to debate. That said, reading through that entire thread will take me a week so I suspect there may not be much more to add here that hasn't already been said!
 
I am not an advocate of line breeding by any means. But the island of Nosy be is only 120 square miles. That's about 10 times smaller than Rhode Island. There has GOT to be a lot of inbreeding going on over there, wouldn't one think?
 
shaunaroxanne said:
I am not an advocate of line breeding by any means. But the island of Nosy be is only 120 square miles. That's about 10 times smaller than Rhode Island. There has GOT to be a lot of inbreeding going on over there, wouldn't one think?
Click to expand...

That would be the logical conclusion.;)
 
junglefries said:
When i first read about the jax, i was freaked out. I was very confused on how everyone's chams came from those 32 (36). How did they not have 6 legs or an arm growing out of their head. It really weighed on me.
Click to expand...

A few select species that we are working with in the USA have less gene pool diversity than that I'm afraid.
 
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