Flaming For Hybrids?

[blappy]

How come the forum description says people will flame others when talking about hybrid fish? Why is that? I'm curious.

 

[gasmask]

How come the forum description says people will flame others when talking about hybrid fish? Why is that? I'm curious.

The whole hybrid issue is very controversial.
Being that these fish are not of natural form and mostly man made, for many people it is seen as unethical.

That said, flaming people for liking them is not very fair. (dyed/injected/mutillated fish I understand, but hybrids?)

 

[orli]

Is not happened to me yet but sometimes you cant help but have a hybrid, after all you cant watch all your fish 24/7 for breeding

 

[Caprichoso]

Is not happened to me yet but sometimes you cant help but have a hybrid, after all you cant watch all your fish 24/7 for breeding

Yes, you can help it but not having fish together that will breed together.

 

[fluttermoth]

Is not happened to me yet but sometimes you cant help but have a hybrid, after all you cant watch all your fish 24/7 for breeding

Yes, you can help it but not having fish together that will breed together.

Exactly! I recently bought some CW021 corydoras that I was intending to keep with my pandas, but after looking at how similar they were, I've kept them apart, just in case.

If hybridising gets out of hand, and hybrids get out into the hobby in general, we stand very real risks of losing the original species; this had already happened with platies and swordtails, and guppies and Endler's; John Endler himself is of the opinion that all of the fish on general sale as 'Endler's' are hybrids; it's only a few specialist breeders that have managed to keep pure strains.

We never know when particular genetic strains may come in useful in the future for science or research, or when wild populations may suffer some catastrophe that wipes them out; we need to preserve genetic diversity; not destroy it because people are careless or deliberately making hybrids for economic or personal reasons.

 

[fishguy2727]

Depending on your definition of a species (which many scientists are starting to realize is an arbitrary idea) if the fish can produce offspring they are not really different species in the first place.

 

[coldcazzie]

Depending on your definition of a species (which many scientists are starting to realize is an arbitrary idea) if the fish can produce offspring they are not really different species in the first place.

I thought that depended on whether their offspring could also produce offspring. If they can reproduce but their offspring are sterile that's one thing, if they can reproduce and their offspring can also procreate then that's quite another. (I'm thinking wider than fish here - thinking mules/ligers/etc here...) I think in the former situation they could just be closely related species, but it would be difficult to argue for entirely different species in the latter case...? (Especially when one of the key methods of differentiating between species is that they cannot interbreed.)

 

[fishguy2727]

Both are definitions of species. I agree that the fertile offspring makes more sense. Then you get into parrot cichlids, I have heard that females are fertile but males are sterile.

No matter how you define a species there is a real world 'species' that breaks the rule. This is why some scientists are leaning towards no real definition or more of an abstract definition that bends to the Family/Genus in question.

 

[SBL]

IMO, If two species can interbreed and make fertile offspring, then whats to say it don't happen in the wild, yes if X species can interbreed with y species but there's many other x species around, very unlikely x species will breed with y species but there's the possibility they will. No one may find the combination x and y species (XY) that's not to say they are alive and surviving. Sure, out of a spawn of 1000, 100 eggs are not fertilized, 100 die by fungus, 50 don't make it past hatching, 200 are eaten by parents or predators, 250 are eaten as juveniles, 200 are eaten or die of natural causes around the sub adult stage. Leaving 100 to become adults, then you have the maybe 25 picked off by predator birds, mammals, large fish, etc. Leaving 75 fertile fish, and if they interbreed, they die off to inter breeding over couple of generations, if they breed with x and y fish, they are broken down genetically to where they no longer show they where hybrids of X and Y. This is my opinion on this. I'm using cichlids as an example to this.