The long wait

[ConcinusMan]

Im hearing that alot of breeders produced more slugs this year not sure whats going on there.

That's what people say every year.

[BLUESIRTALIS]

Well then what do you think could be the cause.

[RedSidedSPR]

I still say coincidence.

[ConcinusMan]

Well then what do you think could be the cause.

Last time I gave my opinion on that, I pissed a bunch of people off. I suspect it was because I was close to to the truth.

Lets just say that when you breed for certain traits that we perceive to be desirable, then over generations, you also breed for many undesirable traits that are unseen, such as low fertility. We unknowingly undo what nature has done, and that is, nature selects for high fertility and tends to "weed out" a lot of these traits that we purposely select for.

There's just not enough breeders willing to spend years and several generations of snake breeding to strenghthen the lines by outcrossing with (preferably) wild snakes. A lot of these problems can be eliminated by doing so. For example, there's nothing wrong with selecting for say, albinism, but you really need to infuse new, wild genes into the lines. In other words, go several generations of hets, while breeding in wild genes. Then go back and inbreed to produce stronger, more fertile albinos. Not enough people are doing that.

[BLUESIRTALIS]

Well the blue female is wild caught and the albino bred to another female with no problems. I just don't know why the blue axanthic didn't produce babies this year. I guess it's just my luck.

[ConcinusMan]

Yeah, well 2 different breeders including myself have bred 3 different pairings of blue anery concinnus' (anery to anery) and none of them produced. Slugs or otherwise.

Maybe it was mistake to only collect females that didn't get gravid that year in the wild because in spite of breeding, they didn't get gravid in captivity either.

[MasSalvaje]

Last time I gave my opinion on that, I pissed a bunch of people off. I suspect it was because I was close to to the truth.

Lets just say that when you breed for certain traits that we perceive to be desirable, then over generations, you also breed for many undesirable traits that are unseen, such as low fertility. We unknowingly undo what nature has done, and that is, nature selects for high fertility and tends to "weed out" a lot of these traits that we purposely select for.

There's just not enough breeders willing to spend years and several generations of snake breeding to strenghthen the lines by outcrossing with (preferably) wild snakes. A lot of these problems can be eliminated by doing so. For example, there's nothing wrong with selecting for say, albinism, but you really need to infuse new, wild genes into the lines. In other words, go several generations of hets, while breeding in wild genes. Then go back and inbreed to produce stronger, more fertile albinos. Not enough people are doing that.

Richard I remember your comments on this in the past and have thought a lot about them this year. I caught a wild female vagrans that was gravid this year to build up my high yellow line I am working on. She was clearly gravid when I took her in so my plan was to let her give birth in captivity and then release her babies in the same area I found her and use her to breed to one of my males next year. Well two weeks after I brought her home she threw slugs, 16 slugs and only one that had any indication it had been fertilized. It made me realize that there are probably just as many slugs thrown in the wild as in captivity. You are correct in that selection is part of it but something I concluded from the female I caught this year is that there are many contributing factors in successful fertilization and development. If any one of those factors fail to take place (as a result of genetics or otherwise) fertilization cannot occur. It is impossible to conclude that there is a single reason behind it when there are so many variables, many of which we still know very little if anything about.

-Thomas