Re: Genetics

Adrian R. Tappin (atappin at ecn.net.au)
Wed, 04 Sep 1996 19:57:57 +1000

At 12:21 4/09/96 +1000, Peter Hughes wrote:

>snip

>I think that a nationaly co-ordinated network would be better than what
already >exists and would be somewhat less work than adrian thinks. Getting
indiviuals to >co coperate would be the hard bit.

>PS Adrian, you may find that the attention to detail that I mentioned
>before would add another dimension to the hobby. We don't seem to have a
>national fish breeders closeness to wild type fish breeding award.

Unfortunately, we don't have anything at all at the moment so any step in
that direction would be a start. I am concerned that as the number of
species and varieties increases we will see more and more species start to
disappear or become "threatened" in captivity. No one person can maintain
all the species we now have. However, as I mentioned in an earlier post we
have to find a rather simple way to do it, certainly at the beginning. If we
can get a number of people involved then we can start adding extras. I have
been involved in species maintainance with other fish species (cichlids) and
we had the same problem trying to get other hobbyists interested.

Perhaps we could publish a species list in club publications with a rating
system based on the number of individual populations in captivity. (We could
even make it an International rating system?) That way everyone would know
what the current status of each species is. However, this would require
information being passed on to a central point so that the list could be
kept updated. However, I have found that some people don't like to tell
others what species they are breeding or maintaining?

People who keep large collections also have to reduce the number of
individuals per spawning because they take up a lot of space. When I spawn
some species I only produce a small number basically for my own purpose. I
think my collection of species (including Blue-eyes)is now around fifty and
have a number of species that require spawning but they will just have to
wait.

The problem is finding someone who's dedicated to the species. A good
example is the Red-finned Blue-eye - How many people who had them still have
them? another is the Honey Blue-eye - many thousands have been wild
collected over the years but how many permanent populations are in
captivity? These are just two examples, there are many more.

We also need to settle this gentics issue as I think we are just stumbling
around in the dark. Perhaps we (ANGFA,RSG,IRG) could get genetic
"fingerprints" of some of the newer wild or F1 species and then somewhere
down the track check captive stocks to see if there has been any changes. I
think this will be the only way we know what happens. At least it would be
something tangible! Otherwise we will just be argueing the pros and cons
forever.

I'm all for a species maintainance program but we need more than a handful
of participants.

Adrian T.
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Adrian R. Tappin
atappin at ecn.net.au
http://www.ecn.net.au/~atappin/home.htm
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