Color morph breeding

saxman146

Arachnobaron
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Do you think that color morphs of different species can breed sucessfully. Like this for example: If I were to try and breed a P. Villosus typical morph with a P. Villosus black morph. Do you think it would work?
 

saxman146

Arachnobaron
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If so, would the babies be black or would they be the typical color? Kinda sounds funny.
 

psychofox

Arachnoknight
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Well, I have thought about this a while myself. I guess normal genetics would apply here. Which morph is recessive, which morph is dominant? Are they homozygote og heterozygote? (hopefully these terms are universal{D )
To find the answer to the last question, you just have to run some breeding experiments - provided "morph breeding" applies to scorpions the same way it applies to reptiles and birds. I am sure someone else here can explain this better than me, but you at least get an idea.

Have you gotten your hands on black villosus too? I am getting some of them in a few months time, and then (when they grow up) I will have breeding groups of all three color morphs.
 

calum

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would they come out mixed? some black some normal?
 

~Abyss~

Arachnoking
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Depends sometimes you see mixing sometimes you see some morphs some regulars it all depends. Heres and example of mixing. This is H. arizonensis arizonensis (FEMALE) with H. arizonensis pallidus (male). These are subspecies and I'm expecting more with a female pallidus VERY soon. Sorry for the poor picture i'll find a better one.


Edit better pic \/
 

Athlon2k2

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I believe the C. sculpturatus and the "Gertschi" morph mate in the wild. I should mate them to find out the result.
 

saxman146

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On top of what has already been stated, I know Giorgio Molisani made a claim a while back that he got a Villosus and transvaalicus to mate, but in the end he believed the female was already gravid from another trans. So I wonder what would happen if they truly had a chance to go at it. Now before anyone goes flaming about how this would affect the pure gene pool, this would be for scientific research. The last thing anyone wants is a "true" species that gets in circulation and isn't pure anymore. (That is unless they wanted one. But that is beside the fact.) Anyways, I don't know if it is even possible.

ALSO: It would be my luck to introduce the two to each other and the transvaalicus would absolutely rip the villosus apart. The Villosus' I have are complete push overs compared to the trans.
 

Brian S

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Please dont do this with your P villosus. There are too few of those in captivity to be doing experiments like that until you breed up some numbers. Please keep them separated for now
 

Galapoheros

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Ha, yeah I've kinda been wanting a pair of P. villosus. Do they generally get the size of P. transvaalicus? Anyway, I got a mix from breeding a black Scolopendra heros with an orange one. The colors just seemed to meet each other half way. It's not a scorpion but closer to a scorpion than mammal, so my guess is that it would be a mixing of colors. Black and white would look gray when mixed for example. Also I have a bunch of P. transvaalicus babies from a normal looking pair but I got a few really dark, almost black ones out of the bunch. I'm thinking each are carrying the same morph gene for the other anyway. So if you threw black morph scorps in an area where there are light colored ones, I think generations would just revert back to the light color because of whatever environmental conditions favor it in the area. I don't understand genetics very well though, I barely squeaked past that course years ago. I just read your question again. I don't think the morphs you mentioned are different species, just a color difference.
 
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skinheaddave

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I read this thread earlier today and have been thinking about it since.

Why is it that people care so much about keeping pure representations of various species/subspecies in the pet trade? Ultimately none are being released back into the wild and most end up simply as pets rather than any sort of scientific subjects. Even for those that do, if you are even a couple generations away from the wild population you run the risk of the founder effect skewing any attempts to relate your observations back to the wild population.

Scorpions are generally generalists and so it isn't like you run much risk of breeding out niche-originated selective traits. This is especially true if you start looking at subspecies, "morphs" etc. -- half of which are simply the inventions of hobbyists at this point and none of which, by definition, actually represent a biological barrier to reproduction.

So why? This isn't intended to be an attack on those principles -- I think I hold them myself -- but rather a genuine interest I have in the motivations of my fellow hobbyists.

Cheers,
Dave
 

~Abyss~

Arachnoking
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Sometimes it's just for the hobby. Just the way herps have different morphs. I really don't care about keeping them "pure".
 

Galapoheros

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Maybe the root of it is that it's the nature of people to compartmentalize and organize things to give things some kind of order. Nature put things in it's place (in the minds of a lot of people) so maybe we want to see some kind of order there and stick to it so we can know it like that. Maybe it's a habit and we do it when it really doesn't make much of a difference. I really started thinking hard about it and typed up a really long thing but it started to sound kind of whacko.
 
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