hybrid?

[david]

Hi to all, is it possible to cross spiders as in the horned baboon?

could i cross nephila spiders? does any one know.

[Alex S.]

Aside from it being impossible for most orders, cross breeding is totally pointless and unhealthy for any arthropod and overall should never be attempted.

Alex S.

[chaset]

Actually some people have succesfully cross bred spiders.
I read somewhere about someone crossbreading different brachopelma species.

there is also a theory that if a male in the wild can't find a female of its own species that it will try any female

as it being dangerous, most attempts have ended up with infertile egg sacs, and if the male does not want anything to do with the female or vice versia you should not force it.

[Code Monkey]

This is a never ending topic - you should search through this board and other boards for the key words hybrid, hybridization, hybridizing.

The short answer is that with tarantulas you can often get males and females from the same genus to breed, some smaller number can actually produce viable offspring. If it is possible with true spiders, it would follow a similar pattern, i.e. species from different genera are too different to succeed with.

True hybrids are sterile. Cross breeding is a genetic dead end with a couple of exceptions. Arachnid taxonomy has a curious artifact: subspecies status is frowned upon, so there are probably examples out there of two similar appearing species that actually should be subspecies of a macro species - these would produce fertile hybrid offspring. There are also examples of what, in arachnid taxonomy, will eventually be folded into a single species because while probably acceptable as two subspecies, they're not so different to keep as two separate species.

Now, all that said, there is only one circumstance that hybridising of arachnids is completley acceptable: taxonomists verifying species status. If you insist upon doing it yourself you must destroy any young that you do not personally plan to keep, and never sell, give away, release, or otherwise distribute any young from a hybrid cross. Particularly for tarantulas, hybrids have great potential to cause problems in the hobby. Less so for shorter lived true spiders, but the same principles should apply.

Here's thread from just a few days ago on the subject:
http://www.arachnopets.com/arachnobo...&threadid=2475

[Alex S.]

Yes, when they are of the same genus, but this is still mainly restricted just to the Theraphosidae. Cross breeding is pointless and pretty much selfish as well.

Alex S.

[david]

Thanks guys for your input,it was just a thought as it is hard to get males with any nephila,and not always sure of the female being mated ,before arrival.

Also not always with species name, just come as nephila from africa,ect ect,so to have a breeding programe of nephila is slow,and possibly with inbreeding.

Comments please.

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by david
Also not always with species name, just come as nephila from africa,ect ect,so to have a breeding programe of nephila is slow,and possibly with inbreeding.

Comments please.

Think of it like this: if you don't do everything you can to ensure you're only crossing members of the same species (and I can see where this might be a difficult task) your first big risk is that the matings won't take at all - they'll either fight/ignore one another, or breed and nothing comes from it. Second, maybe you do get a viable sac, but after raising all those up, they're all sterile and you've got nothing to show for it but better than a year of wasted time and effort. Since breedable hybrid offspring is the rare exception of an exceptional event, no matter how hard it seems, breeding *within* the same species will be far easier overall.

As for inbreeding, it's a far smaller evil than hybridisation. Even if you only start with sacs from two or three mated females, by tracking pedigrees from that point out, it's very easy to get a fairly diverse breeding population even from such a small initial start. Inbreeding is most dangerous when you're "crossing the streams" continually such that every generation has a 50% chance of permanently reducing any given heterozygous allele to a homozygous situation.

[Wade]

If you purchase both the male and the female at the same time from the same dealer, you have a good chance of them both being the same species (probably from the same shipment). Some dealers will throw in the male for free (he's about a tenth of the size of the female, so there's not a lot of intrest in keeping males). If the female was wild collected as an adult, chances are pretty high that she has mated. Males mature before females, and they seek out the webs of immature females, and hang out and live arount the edges (not wanting to be chomped). When she matures, he's there and mates with her as soon as she is ready. If you have a wild collected adult female who's already mated, the key will be keeping her alive and healthy long enough for her to drop a sac. If your female has molted while in captivity, however, this means that she was not mature and you'll need a male. Nephila females do not molt after reaching maturity.

Wade