IcarusZulu wrote: I think you are going to have to chat to Mr Schultz on this one.

Stanley, any thoughts on this?

This type of breeding works with many things from plants to creatures, especially snakes, the different variations of corn snakes out there are all from selective breeding projects.

If selective breeding indeed works with T's (which it should) then time would be the only factor as has been mentioned, but if you are in some way able to keep in touch with as many breeders as possible and always have access to mature specimens with outstanding or prominent traits that you would like use, it might help speed up the process especially with the species that take very long to mature.

What I have not heard of yet are "Freak" cases with T's. I mean the other day I bought a white Dachshund (sausage dog)... that's right white. I walked in, took one look and the puppy was sold. It's not an Albino, it has a proper black nose with some brown speckling on it's ears, but the rest of the dog is clean white, a great specimen for a breeding project. But with T's I have never heard of freak occurrences yet, or even albino occurrences which might make for interesting breeding projects, and this raises questions in my mind.

Like will a selective breeding project bring out homozygous traits through working with specimens exhibiting a clear phenotype in a time short enough to make a project viable? I mean when people hybridize specimens it seems that the results are pretty apparent and obvious, and if this is the case in selective breeding, then it should not take forever to start seeing results.

But I would love to know, will identical alleles be found in 1%, 25%, 50% 100% of slings?

But also, if for example P.Metallica are bred in a selective breeding project so that they are purple with orange and white markings, at what point is it decided that the project has reached it's zenith and that this T is now the "Purple/Orange" form?

If these then spread in to the market will unscupulous people sell them off at crazy prices as some new species. Wait, I think I know the answer to that one.

But also, if these are sold into the market and then other breeders bredd them down to regular P.Metallic, how does this affect things?

Oi... thousands of questions could be asked I guess.

I agree, I would like to hear from Mr & Mrs .Shultz and anyone else that has done any research or work in this area, it would be very interesting and exciting to learn more.

HS

If you use a fast growing species like Psalmopoeus, want this give you a faster result?
And maybe answer a few question in the selective breeding attempt?

Still a very interesting topic and would love to see the out come of the H lividums.

IcarusZulu wrote: I think you are going to have to chat to Mr Schultz on this one.

Selective breeding will take years of dedication as each generation reaches maturity. And even then you have no guarantee on your desired outcome.

snarf wrote:

IcarusZulu wrote: I think you are going to have to chat to Mr Schultz on this one.

Stanley, any thoughts on this?

Sorry it took me this long to get back to you on this. Being halfway around the planet can slow things down a trifle if the timing isn't optimal.

First, this is not a hypothetical discussion. It's happening right now. The very act of breeding tarantulas in captivity automagically is selecting for both those species and those individuals of each species that will breed more easily in a cage under the care of man. We're already playing God!

And, we're already, often unconsciously, selecting for various properties. Aren't we already favoring however slightly our favorite species or our favorite individuals? We like this one's colors, another's personality, that one's size, or that special one's cute little habit of holding its legs up just so.

Secondly, I've almost been banned from both the ATS and the BTS forums for mentioning culling, inbreeding, and selective breeding, and because of the flame wars those acts usually illicit. (Arachnoboards just seems to sit there and laugh at the whole melee!) Visit the following links to see what I mean. This subject is generally "discussed" ( :evil: ) in association with "inbreeding" ( :evil: ) and "culling" ( :evil: ) because these two other activities are pretty much required in the practice of selective breeding. Some of these are long threads and you'll have to wade through a bunch of pages to see how I got myself into trouble. Let the war begin!

Breeding

What a Way to Start a Hobby!

Poecilotheria hanumavilasumica

This subject is apparently extremely contentious among the masses, largely because they don't have a clue about what our species has been doing to itself for 140,000+ years, or about what their ancestors and they have been doing for 20,000 years to domestic plants and animals.

Neither does the "common man" have a clue about what happens in nature, having been mis-indoctrinated by grade school science classes and completely misdirected by short-sighted or utterly erroneous television documentaries. (I'm getting so sick of hearing about the grandeur of nature in rainforests or on coral reefs that I think I'll vomit the next time I see another National Geographic Special! See below.) Here are examples of what our biology teachers never told us, and that I've never seen mentioned in documentaries. (Excerpts from upcoming webpages I'm composing.)

THE NEVER-ENDING WAR WE ALWAYS ALMOST LOSE!
It is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of mortality rates in nature. Let's consider a generic tarantula: The female matures at age five years and dies at age twenty. Her reproductive career is fifteen years long. During that time she mates with one male per year and produces one eggsac of 200 babies per year. Thus, during her life she produces 15 X 200 = 3,000 babies.

If the population of her species is to remain stable over the long run, she must replace herself and fifteen males, a total of sixteen offspring. All the rest of those 3,000 babies (3000-16 = 2984) must die. The attrition rate is a brutal 2984/3000 X 100 = 99.47%!

In order to survive long enough to reproduce, any baby tarantula must have absolutely NO defects, AND must be incredibly lucky!

Did you catch that percentage? Only 1 in 200 babies every lives to reproduce!

PARADISE NEVER
It is important to note here that under the extreme conditions of the rain forest, many organisms that we who are temperate climate dwellers consider as completely aquatic and relatively harmless also thrive out of water. Add to these those creatures that we take for granted as dry land, plus those that are completely alien and unknown to us, and the numbers of kinds of living organisms in a jungle is almost unbelievable.

Worse, a truly astonishing proportion of all of these have evolved completely new and wondrous strategies for living on or in, and at the expense of other organisms, tarantulas most definitely included.

At the end of the day, a jungle is not an idyllic paradise. It's a savage habitat with almost unbelievable mortality rates. The best one can hope for is a quick death in the jaws of a predator. Otherwise, one's fate is an agonizingly slow and painful deterioration and death from parasitism or disease.

How much did you pay for that tarantula? And, why are you so sure you want to keep it in a cage that emulates a jungle?

THE NATURAL AND ORGANIC HYPOTHESIS
And, we don't care what you say, we DO NOT want to go back to living naked on a predator infested savanna or in a disease ridden swamp, giving up our wide screen HDTV, microwave, laptop computer, iPhone, polyester shirts, designer jeans, motorhome, Grand Am, and Sheltie dogs because some misguided daydreamer believes that the habitat that our far distant ancestors evolved in is best for us! And, we are most definitely not convinced that the "natural is better" hypothesis works for our tarantulas either.

End of rant.

Enjoy your little 9-legged, 2-headed, upside-down, not-selectively-bred-enough buddy! :woohoo:

(You asked for my comments. "You got it, Toyota!" :lol: )

Wow... quite a run there Stanley... LOL, nice rant.

That Ray Gabriel fellow seems to be sitting on the highest horse on the planet. Instead of using his knowledge or opinions to be constructive he just wallows in his delusions of righteousness and tries to make everyone sound like fools at the end of his nose. I really wish people like him would adjust their attitudes and realize how much they can change things for the better in a nicer way. Also, people in those posts seem more adamant about their personal feelings, emotions and preferences than the actual topic.

The subject keeps leaning towards In-breeding, when the subject is actually more about selective breeding.

I bet many T breeders have not even heard of a Punnet square but are quick to act like they know it all. Do they know what alleles, phenotypes, genotypes, homozygous and heterozygous mean? I am really not trying to sound clever here, these are just a few things I have been forced to understand more about if I hope to conduct breeding projects, and I am very honest if I say I still know very very little.

Culling also seems to be a hot issue. I think culling or not culling is up to the breeder in question, if one breeder abhors culling then he/she should sell on the excess stock or find other ways to distribute them. But if another breeder is ok with culling then it's his/her choice. There is no reason to shoot each other down about the topic. At the end of the day we need to stay focused on the task of improving species or enhancing them through human selection.

The criteria for that selection can only be based around what we can identify, visually or scientifically. I mean for a crazy example example we can identify:

Brighter colours
Unusual large size of an adult or the eggs it produces
A specimen that usually produces 200 eggs or so suddenly produces 500
Produces pink silk
...or other visual phenotypes

However, we would need scientific tests and proof to use as phenotypes that we can "identify with" to make sure what we are breeding is indeed coming out healthy and strong on the inside.

But I see what you mean Stan, this topic just seems to cause quite a bit of fuss.

Just my opinion, but from what I can see, no-one is qualified enough in all of the sciences that affect the core of breeding that would produce calculated results. Experience is certainly powerful, but a person would need to have a degree in a few subjects surrounding biological sciences and have vast experience with Arachnids to really have a definitive say, don't you think?

HS

HeteroScuderia wrote: Wow... quite a run there Stanley... LOL, nice rant. ...

Ranting is one of my specialties. I almost got a degree in it in university! :laugh:

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... That Ray Gabriel fellow seems to be sitting on the highest horse on the planet. ...

Ray is actually good guy. He's done a lot for the BTS and the hobby in general. I either caught him on a bad day (I read the book. Bad days are allowed.), or I just struck his one sensitive nerve. (That's allowed too. Everybody gets to keep at least one sensitive nerve. I'm starting a collection.) Of course, my response was a knee jerk reaction, and the fight started. We've interacted like gentlemen many times since then, and have more or less put the whole matter behind us. The only reason I brought it up was to illustrate the usual reaction to the topic rather than to badmouth anybody. Again, Ray's a good guy and I respect him a lot.

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... Also, people in those posts seem more adamant about their personal feelings, emotions and preferences than the actual topic. ...

But, if you pick just about any thread that's 6 or more postings long you'll see the same thing. Very few people really have any hard data or real world experiences to report. It all eventually devolves into a discussion of beliefs and prejudices. Eventually we go so far off track that the last dozen or so posts have nothing to do whatsoever with the OP's comment or query.

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... The subject keeps leaning towards In-breeding, when the subject is actually more about selective breeding. ...

True. But, all those terms (inbreeding, culling, selective breeding and others) are part of a more global technology for altering the gene pattern of a plant or animal that we start with to produce something that we think is "better." And, to be fair, everybody has a different spin on what "better" really means.

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... I bet many T breeders have not even heard of a Punnet square but are quick to act like they know it all. Do they know what alleles, phenotypes, genotypes, homozygous and heterozygous mean? ...

Did you see all those eyes glaze over just then? Not only have MOST T breeders never heard of these terms, most want to forget them ASAP too. I, and apparently you, get a kick out of studying genetics (I aced it in college! But that was almost 50 years ago! ), but most everybody else gets a headache from the concepts. These was one girl in my class (And she was NOT blond!) who could not wrap her mind around the concept of meiosis. She passed the course on the strength of her lab work.

In defense of all those who have no clue about genetics, I need to point out that the human race developed a truly impressive array of domestic plants and animals long, LONG, LONG before Darwin, Mendel, and Watson and Crick.

(As an historical side note, Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel were contemporaries. Darwin lived from 1809 to 1882, and Mendel from 1822 to 1884. And, Mendel, who discovered the rules of basic genetics, published his paper describing his work in 1865. But, Darwin never read it! A copy sent to Darwin (I think by Mendel, himself) was discovered in his library after his death, still unopened. Had Darwin read Mendel's paper he would have had the only really weak part of the Law of Evolution nailed! He would have been able to explain how natural selection worked: By selecting against some genes and conserving others.

In today's world that explanation is far too simplistic, but at the level of knowledge in the nineteenth century, it would have been positively earth shattering!)

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... I am really not trying to sound clever here, these are just a few things I have been forced to understand more about if I hope to conduct breeding projects, and I am very honest if I say I still know very very little. ...

You underestimate yourself.

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... Culling also seems to be a hot issue. ...

That's because the masses haven't checked the dictionary for a precise meaning . They've been watching too many documentaries and science fiction movies. In its purest sense, "culling" means "to separate or select." It's only assumed to mean "to kill" because that was traditionally the principle means of culling, and a good reason for justifying the eating of the "culled" organisms.

From a purely practical point of view where tarantulas are concerned, we can't breed all the tarantulas we produce. We must choose only a very few breeders from a pool of literally hundreds or thousands. What do we do with the non-breeders that we cull out? Almost always we sell them as pets.

Now here is the tricky part: "How do we select the breeders (i.e., the non-culled individuals)?"

Most arachnoculturists don't. They merely breed whatever they have on hand! And, this is bad news for all the reasons I alluded to in those aforementioned postings.

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... I think culling or not culling is up to the breeder in question, ...

No! Because the enthusiast who is doing the breeding is already performing a huge culling operation by merely selecting which male and which female are going to be mated. (Remember that they're using only ONE male out of an eggsac that may have produced 50 to 1000 other males. Ditto for the female.) YOU CAN'T NOT CULL! (Unless you can find a way of breeding EVERY male and EVERY female!)

The fact that the enthusiast is restricting that selection to only the available males and/or females does not in any way trivialize the issue or excuse them from the basic laws of selection. It merely means that they're using the wrong rules when choosing the breeders!

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... if one breeder abhors culling then he/she should sell on the excess stock or find other ways to distribute them. ...

1> This is what normally happens anyway.

2> This comment is based on the misconception that "to cull" means "to kill." It does not. It means "to separate," or "to select."

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... The criteria for that selection can only be based around what we can identify, visually or scientifically. ...

But I see what you mean Stan, this topic just seems to cause quite a bit of fuss....

And here we are in danger of getting off on a completely different tangent involving the philosophical, moral, ethical, and personal beliefs and prejudices of what characters should be conserved and what should be bred out of a population. Trust me, that can fill volumes. In fact, it has!

The interesting thing is that while the philosophers are debating such esoteric issues, trying to come to grips with the problem, the common man is busy making a fortune out of selling seedless watermelons, albino hamsters, and 10-legged tarantulas! Being basically of strong peasant stock, I've never had a lot of use for philosophers anyway. :laugh: I'm told that they do make nice pets, though, once they're housebroken!

HeteroScuderia wrote: ... but from what I can see, no-one is qualified enough in all of the sciences that affect the core of breeding ...

Not true. There are two sub-sciences in the science of Agronomy, namely Animal Husbandry and Plant Husbandry, that not only deal with these subjects, but have them firmly under control. They produce new breeds of plants and animals almost daily for specific purposes. They dream about selective breeding in their sleep. They think about culling over their corn flakes in the morning. For them, inbreeding is a way of life. (I can't believe I wrote that! )

I hope all this helps. H***! I'd be vastly impressed if anybody else reads it at all!

Enjoy your little 10-legged philosopher!