Hi all

Just a question on breeding, is it bad to breed tarantulas of the same clutch "brother & Sister"?

Would it mess up the gene pool like human incest?
Never realy heard any one touch on this subject before.. would be interesting i think.

Shouldn't be a problem in the short run. Whether it will do anything in a few generations time is anyone's guess though.
Till DNA testing is done in tarantulas we wont know either.
That being said, with the lack of new genes coming into the country, we will have to continue tarantula breeding in the limited gene pool and hope for the best.

I think Mascaraneus remotus has proven that inbreeding isn't a problem in tarantulas in the long run.

I dont think incest is a big problem because arachnid DNA is very conservative - there are no spider subspecies, for instance. This would imply that any mutation which causes an aberration would die out very quickly. It would appear that spiders evolve slowly and incrementally, rather than like us humans, who are continuously shuffling our genes around. One of the benefits of this is that a local population can recover even when reduced to one gravid female - the males with their short lifespans ensure that the same offspring are not repeated, even when bred to their mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother!