Endler's livebearers from Laguna Los Patos are unlike the common guppy (P.
reticulatus) in that the population of fish seem to throw carbon copies of
the parents whereas the common guppie has extremely variable offspring from
the same parents. What gives?
BG
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Neely <rheopresbe_at_hotmail.com>
To: nanfa_at_aquaria.net <nanfa at aquaria.net>
Date: Friday, November 05, 1999 11:26 PM
Subject: Re: NANFA-- RE: Great debate
>B.G.,
>
>>If ten separately raised groups of guppie were maintained by ten
>different
>>aquarists, be they scientist or not, with no interbreeding >with groups
>>from another locale, and if their natural habitat were >restored, would
>>they revert to the original wild-stock form >eventually? They still carry
>>the same genes and even though they >were captively maintained in a pure
>>form, wouldn't the stock have >the same DNA regardless?
>
>Depends on how many guppies you are maintaining, and what the original
>pattern of variation is like. To reduce the effects of genetic drift (by
>which alleles-various attributes coded by a gene- are lost just due to
>random chance alone), you'd have to keep a pretty sizeable number of
guppies
>(at least 500, and a couple of orders of magnitude above that would be
>preferable). If genes necessary for survival in the wild are lost to drift,
>then no, they're just gone and you'll just have to wait around for however
>many 1000s or 1000000s of years required for favorable mutations to accrue.
>Problem is, the fish are going to have a tough time during that period...
>
>cheers,
>Dave
>
>
>
>______________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
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