# Just wondering (inbreeding)



## TommyZ (May 3, 2013)

Im by no means near being competant enough to breed, however i was wondering, (maybe a dumb ?) but, is there inbreeding issues with torts as there is with mamals? Meaning, can babies from same clutch reproduce together down the road? Or is that not ok? Reason i ask is my new favorite breeder i follow (JD) speaks of "selecting" his best over past decade to produce those awesome babies he makes, and im just curious how that is all tracked. Sorry if this is a dumb ?...

Tom


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## mctlong (May 3, 2013)

*RE: Just wondering*

Not a dumb question at all. Torts from the same clutch can produce offspring, technically. However, its not a good idea to breed them. The same genetic concerns apply to tortoises as all animals, including mammals. Recessive, potentially maladaptive genes are more prevalent in the offspring of closely related animals. This results in a higher incidence of birth defects. The more closely related the animals, the more birth defects you will see.


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## TommyZ (May 3, 2013)

*RE: Just wondering*



mctlong said:


> Not a dumb question at all. Torts from the same clutch can produce offspring, technically. However, its not a good idea to breed them. The same genetic concerns apply to tortoises as all animals, including mammals. Recessive, potentially maladaptive genes are more prevalent in the offspring of closely related animals. This results in a higher incidence of birth defects. The more closely related the animals, the more birth defects you will see.



I see, so, lets say you have a single male to several females. Female 1 has a clutch, female 2 has a clutch, can babies from those two clutches from different mothers breed together with no risk of defects even though they have the same father? or is that also a risk? Im asking because down the road i would love to breed these torts, but being that i only have 1 as of now and it is not sexed, id like to best plan how to assemble my group. Is it best to buy a few more hatchlings and see where nature takes me, or better to buy older, sexed torts? Id lean towards sexed ones, only cuz knowing my luck id wind up with 4 of the same sex, lol.


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## shanu303 (May 4, 2013)

*RE: Just wondering*

there is still chances of defects and there are chromosomes coming from the father as well...... so there might be chances of the maladaptive trait to be expressed ...... so the right thing to do is avoid such highly risk tasks and better breed 2 individuals with no as such relation at all..... nature's mechanism is far more complex than we think ...... we shouldn't be messing up with that......


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## mctlong (May 5, 2013)

*RE: Just wondering*



TommyZ said:


> I see, so, lets say you have a single male to several females. Female 1 has a clutch, female 2 has a clutch, can babies from those two clutches from different mothers breed together with no risk of defects even though they have the same father? or is that also a risk?



There is a risk. I do not recommend breeding half-siblings. The more closely related the tortoises, the greater the risk. Your best bet (as Shanu mentioned) is to breed animals who are not related.



TommyZ said:


> Im asking because down the road i would love to breed these torts, but being that i only have 1 as of now and it is not sexed, id like to best plan how to assemble my group. Is it best to buy a few more hatchlings and see where nature takes me, or better to buy older, sexed torts? Id lean towards sexed ones, only cuz knowing my luck id wind up with 4 of the same sex, lol.


Completely up to you. Hatchlings are cheaper than adults. So, if you buy hatchlings and raise them yourself then you're potentially saving money and have the added enjoyment of watching them grow up. However, buying unsexed hatchlings is a gamble because a successful breeding group has a good ratio of males to females. The ratio depends on the species, but generally consists of one male per every two or more females. If you buy your torts as hatchlings without knowing the sex, then you may end up with more males than you need, or like you said, 4 of the same sex.


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## TommyZ (May 5, 2013)

Thanks much for the replies, i think maybe ill take a risk with a couple more hatchlings anyway, then in a few years when theyre ready i can just get them mature mates. Luckily for me i do not have any kids so I can have expendable income to get older torts. And also hopefully in those few years I'll probably be half as smart as everyone else I don't know what I'm doing here, lol

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## N2TORTS (May 5, 2013)

Zman .... not up for a debate ( which I'm sure this thread will start )but here is my two cents, with some adequate backing....in geneticsâ€™.
According to conventional wisdom a very touchy subject no doubt â€¦..and more so a â€œHuman Moral Conceptâ€ we have been taught and still learning more about , but different rules apply to reptiles, fish and amphibians.
The fear of harmful results from inbreeding animals is generally exaggerated, coming more from a few misunderstood problems in human genetics. Many reptile populations are tightly inbred already.
On this definition, inbreeding at its most restrictive applies to what would be considered unquestioned incest in human beings - parent to offspring or a mating between full siblings. Uncle-niece, aunt-nephew, half sibling matings, and first cousin matings are called inbreeding by some people and line breeding by othersâ€¦.ever seen the movie 
â€œ Deliverance â€â€¦.<grin>
In genetic terminology, inbreeding is the breeding of two animals who are related to each other. In its opposite, out crossing, the two parents are totally unrelated. Since all pure breeds of animal trace back to a relatively limited number of specific speciesâ€˜, all pure breeding is by this definition inbreeding, although the term is not generally used to refer to matings where a common ancestor does not occur four or five generations in the latter.
What does inbreeding (in the genetic sense) do? Basically, it increase the probability that the two copies of any given gene will be identical and derived from the same ancestor. Technically, the animal is homozygous for that gene. The heterozygous animal has some differences in the two copies of the gene Remember that each animal (or plant, for that matter) has two copies of any given gene (two alleles at each locus, if you want to get technical), one derived from the father and one from the mother...... If the father and mother are related, there is a chance that the two genes in the offspring are both identical copies contributed by the common ancestor. The major concern of inbreeding is that genes for defects like split scutesâ€¦.(a different thread soon to come) may be carried as recessives by the breeding animals but not displayed. If parents and offspring are persistently inbred, there is a strong tendency for such â€œdefectiveâ€ recessive genes to become concentrated. Statistically there is a greater chance of a matching gene, which means that the â€œbadâ€ trait appears in more and more of the offspring. Remember that recessive genes â€” good and bad â€” are never lost from a line, but just arenâ€™t displayed often enough and or skipped through a few generations to cause a problem. Take a look at cancers, heart disease , diabetes , weight problems â€¦all genetic traits and can be traced back through your familyâ€™s records.
JD~


I might add....the chances of breeding one of your hatchlings to a parent or one of it's siblingsâ€™ is a good 7-10 years development to maturity . Why much of the info is still new to this day . Just to produce viable F1s' and F2's it would take 20 years plus to see the results....


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## TommyZ (May 5, 2013)

N2TORTS said:


> Zman .... not up for a debate ( which I'm sure this thread will start )but here is my two cents, with some adequate backing....in geneticsâ€™.
> According to conventional wisdom a very touchy subject no doubt â€¦..and more so a â€œHuman Moral Conceptâ€ we have been taught and still learning more about , but different rules apply to reptiles, fish and amphibians.
> The fear of harmful results from inbreeding animals is generally exaggerated, coming more from a few misunderstood problems in human genetics. Many reptile populations are tightly inbred already.
> On this definition, inbreeding at its most restrictive applies to what would be considered unquestioned incest in human beings - parent to offspring or a mating between full siblings. Uncle-niece, aunt-nephew, half sibling matings, and first cousin matings are called inbreeding by some people and line breeding by othersâ€¦.ever seen the movie
> ...





Thanks JD, as always youre the man! Trying to learn all i can about all this. Im leaning towards getting another couple of babies so i have a group "grow up together" and probably in some shorter time, ill get myself a pair of mature breeders when I feel confident I can do it responsibly (will take a while). Im currently reading up on all I can regarding genealogy. Perhaps you can just hold a seminar and teach us all you know?..lol Thanks again!


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## Millerlite (May 5, 2013)

If you get hatchlings you never know the sex, of you end up with all males you can trade for female, problem usually is males are cheaper then females for he most part there for you eventually will have to trade and pay most likely, but I like raising them up


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## TommyZ (May 5, 2013)

I think id prefer to raise them up too, but i dont think id want to wait 7 years for maturation. Im pretty sure my pathing now. Ill get a few more babies and raise my little "family", and once i feel confident that i can responsibly start breeding, ill get a mated pair that is mature. Im having a buddy of mine who is a union carpenter come by tonight to help me design some tables to put down in my basement. I have a huge open space basement that will be perfect for all of this. I'm targeting the end of the summer to have tables and area built and set up all nice..... You folks have created a monster 

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## jaizei (May 5, 2013)

N2TORTS said:


> Zman .... not up for a debate ( which I'm sure this thread will start )but here is my two cents, with some adequate backing....in geneticsâ€™.
> According to conventional wisdom a very touchy subject no doubt â€¦..and more so a â€œHuman Moral Conceptâ€ we have been taught and still learning more about , but different rules apply to reptiles, fish and amphibians.
> The fear of harmful results from inbreeding animals is generally exaggerated, coming more from a few misunderstood problems in human genetics. Many reptile populations are tightly inbred already.
> On this definition, inbreeding at its most restrictive applies to what would be considered unquestioned incest in human beings - parent to offspring or a mating between full siblings. Uncle-niece, aunt-nephew, half sibling matings, and first cousin matings are called inbreeding by some people and line breeding by othersâ€¦.ever seen the movie
> ...





Interesting. Do you have some sources you would like to share?


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## Angi (May 6, 2013)

This is probably a dumb question, but wouldn't torts from the same clutch be the same sex because of the tempature of the eggs?


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## Tom (May 6, 2013)

Angi said:


> This is probably a dumb question, but wouldn't torts from the same clutch be the same sex because of the tempature of the eggs?



Only if the temperature was at the extreme end of the temp range for a given species. For example: 84 will give you all male sulcatas and 90 will give you all female sulcatas. anything in between and you will get a mix, possibly leaning one way or the other, depending on the actual temperature at certain times during the development of the embryo.

I was told by a geneticist that it would take at least 33 generations of inbreeding in cockroaches to experience any genetic maladies. Meaning if you started with a single female and a single male and then only bred to them and their resulting offspring, it would take at least 33 generations to see any problems. Add a third unrelated individual and the number of generations goes into the thousands. For mammals it can happen much sooner than 33 generations. Fish, reptiles and amphibians are somewhere in between, as JD, pointed out.


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## TommyZ (May 6, 2013)

In Tom and JD we trust  It seems i started quite a debate here with my silly beginner ?, really i was thinking down the line when im ready if there was any risk of having a "2 headed mutant" though i am years away from any breeding, i am starting now to learn about genetics and how traits are passed. It really struck me as interesting when i saw JD talking about "playing with genes". I am educated at Berkeley, but havent a lick of science background, so this is all like chinese to me. After JD's post i sat here scratching my head wondering "what does f1 and f2 female mean?"...go ahead, laugh at the rookie


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## N2TORTS (May 6, 2013)

jaizei said:


> Interesting. Do you have some sources you would like to share?


Jaizei...for some reason you ALWAYS want cites: Are you an English teacher?....Do I think you care or even read them .... not one bit.
So if you have a problem ...you can PM me direct.
or if you really want the info in detail or "copied versions" posted from many sources which most authors gain their info from outside sources anyhow .............
here you go :

SchildkrÃ¶ten, by Harald Artner & Elmar Meier (Eds.). 2000. Nature und Tier Verlag. 181pp. ISBN 3-931587-42-8. German language. This is a collection of papers from the Grosses SchildkrÃ¶tensymposium 1997. Around two dozen papers. 
Inbreeding Reptiles May 6 2011 Reptile Channel
By Jerry G. Walls
Turtles & Tortoises of the World, by David Alderton. 1988. Blandford Press. 191pp. ISBN 0-7137-1970-2. A good overview of turtles and tortoises, for those that aren't biology majors, with sections on; Form and Function, Reproduction, Evolution, Distribution, and more. An updated version of this book is out now
Animal Genetics
Internet articles by Sue Ann Bowling May 11 2010
Dr. Thomas Greek ...... One of the best Tortoise Vets on the West Coast : A friend and my Vet:Tom Greek, DVM, is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and a Southern California native. He practices small and exotic animal medicine at Yorba Linda Veterinary Hospital in Yorba Linda, Calif.

JD~


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## immayo (May 6, 2013)

TommyZ said:


> After JD's post i sat here scratching my head wondering "what does f1 and f2 female mean?"...go ahead, laugh at the rookie



THIS... I have no clue myself what the F1 and F2 mean. But supposedly I am picking up an F1. Which I would guess is a good thing!?? haha


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## Millerlite (May 6, 2013)

F1 are going to babies of who ever laid the eggs, now you take that baby breeds down the line when ever ready, those babies are f2, and so on, 

You will see it more in regards to cb. You have the parents that are wc they breed the babies from those parents are all cb and first gen pretty much, they breed now you have cb again another gen. This is how I'm guessing te f1 f2 reference is being used


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## N2TORTS (May 6, 2013)

The letter number comboâ€¦F1, F2 ect â€¦..is a way to keep track of generations of offspring from one/two parents. The F1 stands for Filial 1, and it means the first generation of offspring produced from two different parental types. F2 means two generations on, F3 is three generations on ectâ€¦..
So if you mated a â€œPure Hypo Male â€ to a â€œPure Hypo Femaleâ€œ, then the offspring would be the F1. If you mated those off spring you'd get the F2 generation, and so on.( as Tom mentioned with roaches it would take 33 times ) If you mate two different filial generations together then normally you would go back to the lowest number - so for example an F1 to an F3 would normally count as producing F2 offspringâ€¦.. hence the topic â€œ inbreedingâ€ . If you bred an f1 (or any generation for that matter) to an unrelated animal, their offspring will be f1 - this is known as out-crossing and is done to prevent too much inbreeding.
Just some triviaâ€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.. 
The word filial comes from the Latin words filius, which means "son," and filia, or daughter.

JD~


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## Millerlite (May 6, 2013)

How fast do roaches reproduce?


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## Tom (May 6, 2013)

Millerlite said:



> How fast do roaches reproduce?



There are a lot of variables, species and temperature probably being the two variables with greatest effect. Diet and humidity are also important.

At 80-85 degrees and acceptable humidity, Blatta lateralis egg cases hatch in about 20 days. It takes about 3-4 months for them to molt into maturity. They are impregnated the day they molt into maturity. This is one of the faster species. Madagascar hissers would be on the other end of the spectrum. They can take 12-14 months to reach maturity at those temps.

Ummm, I think this might be too far off topic. We should start another thread if there are more roach questions. Apologies to the OP.


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