Inbreeding?

What's your opinion on inbreeding. I've thoguht about breeding a Piebald female to a spinnerblast male and get a male spinnerblast het pied. Then I breed that male to my original pied female and get visual pieds.

Id say nothing wrong with it unless you start seeing negative traits.

Its fine to do as long as the snakes are healthy and you don't think they carry any heritable disability. Many often prove out recessive genetics that way.

Reptiles do not have the same issues that mammals have when inbreeding or line breeding. (Not counting the morphs that are prone to genetic defects)

Ball pythons in particular are a non migratory species. So they breed to whatever snakes are in the same area in the wild. Its safe to say that breeding with relatives is not uncommon. Its also how locality based animals are established.

Natural selection keeps the population strong and selects against weakness/negative traits. In captivity, the humans are the ones responsible for that selection.

So with that said, if you choose to inbreed or line breed, I personally wouldn't go overboard with it and only choose to do a few generations at the very most. Breeding healthy animals should be more important than genetic potential.


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That's actually good to know. Do you think inbreeding makes less helthier animals in ball pythons? Just wondering.



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Originally Posted by Misha

That's actually good to know. Do you think inbreeding makes less healthier animals in ball pythons? Just wondering.



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Depends if there are genes present that cause the negative traits. Inbreeding can strengthen a genetic line also, assuming the negative traits are weeded out or not present in the first place.

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Originally Posted by OhhWatALoser

Depends if there are genes present that cause the negative traits. Inbreeding can strengthen a genetic line also, assuming the negative traits are weeded out or not present in the first place.

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What would be some of those negative traits be? Something like blindness I take it? The reason I ask is because I'm not aware of too many negative traits in ball pythons. Definitely want to learn more.

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Originally Posted by Misha

That's actually good to know. Do you think inbreeding makes less helthier animals in ball pythons? Just wondering.



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It can go either way depending on the animals used.

Lets say:
2 animals that have no negative genes or traits are bred together. Since they have no deleterious alleles, that means they can only produce healthy offspring that do not contain those bad genes.
And as Ohhwataloser said, it could strengthen the line.

In contrast, 2 animals that have deletrious alleles could produce offspring that possess more of those deleterious alleles.


People are always saying how mutt dogs are healthier than purebreds. False. Mutts are not always more healthy. (American Bully anyone?)
If those mix dogs inherited the poor traits of their parents, they could also be just as bad as other genetic train wrecks. For example, a mutt that has English Bulldog blood could possess the same breathing issues as their purebred counterparts.

Offspring health can go either way depending on the health and genetics of the breeding animals.
And the thing about inbreeding, you're generally mixing together a similar set of genes. So you have a greater chance of exposing a specific gene; good or bad.

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Originally Posted by Misha

What would be some of those negative traits be? Something like blindness I take it? The reason I ask is because I'm not aware of too many negative traits in ball pythons. Definitely want to learn more.

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Something that usually promotes defects, weakness, or less than quality of life.
Spinal kinks for example.

I appreciate the explanation. That definitely make sense.

I guess my question is, is there's a lot of these deformities in ball python genetics and which one of them are more popular or easiest to identify?

Someone should possibly make a sticky in the breeding forum on this subject.


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Misha

I appreciate the explanation. That definitely make sense.

I guess my question is, is there's a lot of these deformities in ball python genetics and which one of them are more popular or easiest to identify?

Someone should possibly make a sticky in the breeding forum on this subject.


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Most would be fairly obvious, deformed body parts or something like eyes or jaws missing. I have also heard about snakes that show symptoms like train wreak spiders, but are not spiders. Any of these could be contributed to non-genetic factors also tho, so don't let one negative animal or even one clutch make you panic. Incubation and environmental factor can also cause it. However, if you produce a few negative animals in the same line of animals, you might want to try some outcrossing and hope to remove the negative genes.

How do you explain to non-reptile people about line breeding? There are already so many stigmas I'd hate to have people think badly of the industry.