A Sign of a Wounded

 Breeding, Genetics, Swedish Vallhund  3 Responses »
Apr 192012
 

Over the course of the last year I have been assembling information on the Swedish Vallhunds. The starting point was my own dog with a five-generation pedigree. At first the state of the breed seems to be relatively positive with low Co-efficient of Inbreeding (COI) once I have plugged in data, provided through SVPedigrees maintained by Sharon Donaldson in Australia; using Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice Spreadsheet at first then later BreedMate PedX. However, there were many holes in his pedigree.

A much more comprehensive dataset was extracted from Worldwide Swedish Vallhunds – Västgötaspets Pedigree
Database once kept by the now-deceased Leone Darling. It is rather a shame due to the death of a predominant breed historian, the domain will one day be taken down once it expires since the information is much more complete with far fewer errors. Using the dataset from Ms. Darling provided a much clearer picture.

When Christopher Landauer revealed one must go back to the founders to get a more reliable calibration of a dog’s COI, a graph of why it is not enough to look at the COI(3) and COI(5) was produced. With Riley, we will take a look at the COI(29).

Distressed by the relatively high COI, more information on the founders and popular sires and brood bitches was needed. To understand why such a high COI was procured, we must first understand what a pedigree collapse is. However the entire tree is relatively compact and there are a few noticeable collapses at a glance. The good news is they are not frequent. The bad news is not all the known founders are included in his complete pedigree. This hints the possibility several lines died out.

Pedigree tree highlighting repeated ancestors generated with PedX.

When inquiring numerous breeders about this issue with Riley, it was learned he is very typical of the breed. In fact, he is a relatively accurate sample of the Swedish Vallhund population.

So what happened? The modern population of Swedish Vallhunds, in which there is approximately 500 registrations world-wide every year, once had a more diverse ancestral base. A great number of potentials were rejected due to poor understanding of recessives and lack of knowledge of concepts essential to population genetics and quantitative genetics such as allele frequency and polygenes when the breeding program first initiated even though the rejects had obvious influences or characteristics. Ontop of the inability to recognize suitors, many of the progeny were sold unregistered and only the ones who were seen as ideal for breeding were registered for many decades after the founding of the Swedish Vallhunds. In addition, there were a few kennels between 1960s and 1970s producing surpluses of puppies which coincided with the extinction of several dam-lines and a a couple of sire-lines in the 1970s and 1980s. The bleeding of the breed slowed down when the Swedish Kennelklubben mandated entire litters must be registered in the 1980s, and a rule was passed in the 1990s stating a sire cannot contribute more than 5% of the existing gene-pool. As the result, conductor was able to slow down the train to hell.

However using pedigree software are quite limiting and they don’t tell us a great deal of information. There are quite a few of them out there. One of the easiest software to utilize, often used in population genetics, ecology and conservation biology for visualization, although the original purpose of the software was for discovering new relations between proteins in biochemstry and genomic laboratories, is an open-source network analysis program such as: Cyptoscope, Gephi, Pajek, BioLayout Express3D. There are plenty of software floating around on the Internet which regurge useful information.

In the next post, an illustration using a node-mapping software will be provided and explained. We will walk through as we add more information to the dataset and change how it is processed, different interpretations arise. We will also explore why in a competitive world where everyone is more concerned with their self-image, a pedigree record is rather limiting. A pedigree is a tool which only becomes more useful as more hard data is added.

Getting Down to the Basics

 Breeding, Closed Registry, Genetics and Health, Open Registry, Ponderings  No Responses »
Oct 032011
 

One of the criticisms surrounding the dog’s eye view of breeding stemming from an earlier post, “Re-framing”, is it  either paints them as social parasites or strips down their best assets to veneer. Both are the furthest from the truth.

In fact, the re-framed perceptive is not really from the dog’s point of view. No life-form has control over its own fate. The English Bulldog didn’t ask to be in the state it’s presently in. The Neapolitan Mastiff doesn’t desire to drown in its own folds. They are simply genetically programmed to be that way. It is more accurate to say it’s from the DNA’s point of view.

The cold hard truth is we are all vessels for our genes. All living things only exist as vehicles to replicate themselves. The problem is this implies genes are selfish. They are not; that’s anthromorphism. Thinking of genes as such leads to dangerous ideologies with unforeseen consequences.

Genes are not conscious. They don’t will themselves into existence. They are either there or they are not; and either those genes will succeed in replicating themselves or the collective fails to thrive. In no way can they predict dead-ends.

Let’s go back to the basics: physics is constantly struggling to reach an equilibrium; molecules are bound to the laws of physics; molecules attempt to stabilize themselves through chemical reactions; DNA are made up of chemicals; DNA replicates because it is a stable form for molecules to bond. Therefore, the final product is stable within its environment, and evolution is a force which allows the population to re-stabilize. In turn, artificial selection is a form of co-evolution.

To tie it back with the dogs: the English Bulldog only exists because its environment permits the current form. Saying the English Bulldog is meant to be tortured in order to be pampered is like saying cattle willingly go to the slaughter because their existence rests solely on cultivation. They don’t. It’s just how reality pans out.

It is also grasping at straws dogs are not aware of their own existence. It is like saying humans are not aware of their short-comings. If when we interact with others, our weak areas become obvious, then dogs are also aware of their limitations. If the English Bulldog could breathe, they would take it. However they know they cannot make things better, so they do the best in what they do– catering to their owners.

The best example of illustrating how dogs are aware of their limitations is how a pack of hounds are constructed for the purpose of chasing cougars or bears. Oftentimes, Airedale Terriers and Coonhounds or Plott Hounds are paired together. The job of the Hound is to keep track of the game in order to keep the pressure on the run and to bay. The Hound takes the backseat to the Terrier when the cat or the bear takes the final stand. It is the Terrier’s job to confuse their foe to prevent the end-game from being a massacre. The two works beautifully together making up for each others’ weaknesses.

The same can be said about many dogs and stability within their nichés: Border Collies are best tailored competing in sheep-trials; the English Shepherds inhabit small farms; the Saluki excels in coursing; the Curs are well-rounded for the non-affluent; and the English Bulldog are well-cared for under owners doting over them. If the individual are unable to fulfill their niché, they spill over into neighbouring niches. If related niches cannot be found, they cease to exist.

It’s why breeds are dynamic. It is safe to say most Border Collies are enrolled in a sport of some sort. Unlike their predecessors, the Finnish Spitz now specializes in treeing. Similarly, the sensitive nature of the Golden Retriever lends to their excellence as service dogs. There’s no shame in shift of purposes as it is what enables the dogs to continue their existence.

That being said, the gene-centric view explains many behaviours why dogs are the way they are in their coalition with mankind. However to fullly grasp the awesome power it habours, we first must look past our tendency to humanize the unconscious.

In fact,  the gene selection theory can be generalized. Dogs engage in pack dynamics because it divides the labour. They are altruistic; not because there is a hidden agenda where the individual self-benefits, but because it keeps the environment stable for them to thrive. The interdependence of one individual with another is for the whole of the species. Otherwise there is no foundation to build on.

With the genetic point of view in mind, it is pitiful none of us can truly ever shake off our perception. There is so much potential left untouched.

 Posted by at 4:00 pm

Re-framing

 Breeding, Genetics  13 Responses »
Sep 262011
 

It is rather foolish to think of humans domesticating the dogs. In fact, it would be more accurate to say they engaged in a pact with us. Now, in order to explain this, one must first dislodges the Judeo-Christian view-point of the world where mankind has domain over nature.

For eons, we have a self-centric view of the Universe which has been proven to be false: the Earth is at the center of the Universe; mankind is the only one capable of developing tools, languages and cultures; humans are the only sentient beings; and we are the only one who broke free of the shackles of evolution. Of course, none of this is true: Johannes Kepler debunked the geocentric view of the solar system; chimpanzees are also capable of fashioning tools; dolphins and whales have complex way of communicating in compositions of low-frequency sounds; elephants have been shown to recognize themselves in mirrors; and the war on viruses and micro-organisms is a constant reminder we are still at the mercy of nature. Let’s go one step further: the delusion of domestication is dependent on who view themselves as gaining the most benefits.

A drawing of two men, one with a spear and the other stumbled, with a black spitz-type dog facing a bear.

Bear-hunting in winter.

Dog and man have co-evolved together, however neither one of us actually see it this way. From our point of view: we dominated the wolf; employed them to share the load and search games; sculptured their flesh and bones; manipulated their behaviours in our favour; and they are objects of status-elevation. From the dog’s point of view, they domesticated us. The hounds see us as an asset in a hunt, delivering the killing blow to the boar or the bear. The team of huskies request us to hunt for them, to partition the shot moose or caribou, and load up the sled with our opposable thumbs to haul the meat back to their dens. The farm collie struck a bargain with the farmer for a bed’n'breakfast deal in exchange for manual labour. The Chin leads a lofty lifestyle sitting in the imperial palace as a figurehead, with servants swooning all over him; and he is protected from the elements by the sleeves of the kimonos of his escort in the outside world. From their point of view, we are the ones who have been domesticated by the dogs.

With the alliance forged between wolves and humans several millennia ago, a contract has been signed and the two of us has been bound ever since. Once in awhile, the contract is re-negotiated. In the last 200 years, dogs have agreed to an addendum allowing show breeders to sculpt their offspring to be reimbursed with a guaranteed sex life. In the last 50 years, a clause was written in, asking the dogs to become surrogates in absence of kinship among our own kind. No longer are dogs and humans comrades working toward a common goal, but rather as brothers or sisters; or daughters and sons. While they are not our blood relatives, the relationships have manifested as such.

Now, an alternative view to domestication is not entirely a new concept. It was recently touched on by journalist Michael Pollan in his lecture, “Plant’s-Eyed View”, at a TED conference in 2007; which is now subtitled in a multitude of languages. For those whose browser cannot load or view the video, the transcript is attached to the blog post here in a .TXT format. Now, a lot of people have problems with Pollan for political reasons surrounding one of his earlier works. It’s understandable.

Here’s a little known secret: the concept is actually borrowed from a 1991 lecture series hosted by Richard Dawkins designed by the Royal Institution in London for children, “Growing Up in the Universe”; in particular, the fourth installation, “The Ultraviolet Garden”. A captioned version on YouTube can be found here in Engish. For those who do not have access to videos, once again, a .TXT copy of the interactive transcript is already here. The episode itself is worth watching as there is a lovely narrative excerpt by Douglas Adams from one of his novels.

However Dawkins’s frame of thought stems from one of his books published in 1978 called The Selfish Gene, in which misconceptions were later clarified in his first documentary, “Nice Guys Finish First”, airred by BBC Horizon in 1987. One can find the full hour-long clip on YouTube here via WhyEvoutionisTrue channel. For those who don’t have access to YouTube, or wish to follow along via transcript here.

A side by side view of a monsterous-looking Morlock beside a human-like Eloi woman.

From the 1960 film of The Time Machine

Actually, Dawkins wasn’t the first one to come up with this. H.G. Wells touched on it in The Time Machine in 1895 with the Eloi believing they enslaved the Morlocks in subterranean factories; and the Morlocks believing they domesticated the Eloi for the slaughter to fill their bellies. However for many decades, among naturalists, convention follows nature is red in teeth and claws. It wasn’t until within the last few decades evolutionary biologists began looking at things in a new light.

Now, most people have a problem with Richard Dawkins, not because of his books or his findings, but because of his aggressive anti-theist stance, ongoing since the mid-’90s, advocating for militant atheism. Fine, it is acceptable some find him offensive. However there are no shortage of mutualism and symbiotic relationships such as the clownfish and the sea anemones or the shark and the remora. In that respect, Dawkins’s abhorred political stance does not invalidate the truth of his lecture.

Nevertheless, here is what Dawkins has to say about the bees to his audience of school children in “The Ultraviolet Garden” lecture:

Earlier this year, I was driving through the countryside with a little girl of 6 and she pointed out some flowers by the wayside. I asked her what she thought flowers were for. She gave a very thoughtful answer. Two things, she said: “To make the world pretty and to help the bees make honey for us.” I thought that was a very nice answer and I was sorry that I had to tell her that it wasn’t true. Her answer is not too different from the answer that most people throughout history would have given. The very first chapter of the Bible sets it out: “Man has dominion over all living things.” The animals and plants are there for our benefit. This attitude was unquestioned throughout the Middle Ages and it really persists to this day.One pious man in the Middle Ages thought that weeds were there to benefit us, because it’s so good for our spirit to have to go and pull them up. And another reverend gentleman thought that the louse was indispensable, because it provided a powerful incentive to cleanliness. There’s also been the suggestion that animals positively want to do their bit for the good of mankind and even want to be eaten by us.

[...]

We need to find an entirely new view of the world. We need to try to see things through the eyes of other creatures, instead of all the time through our own self-interested eyes. Flowers, the bees might say, are there to provide us with pollen and nectar. But even the bees haven’t quite got it right. They’re a lot more right than we would be, if we think that flowers are there for our benefit. The fact is that flowers, or at least the bright and showy ones, are there because, in a sense, bees have cultivated them, domesticated them. When I say bees, I include butterflies and other sorts of pollinators.

This is why I used the word “garden” in the title of this lecture. But why the ultraviolet garden? Well that’s a parable, like the parable of the Good Samaritan, or the sower. Ultraviolet light is a kind of light that we can’t see. It’s just like ordinary light except that it’s a different wavelength and we can’t see it. Bees can see it, they see it as a distinct color and bees cannot see red. So, flowers are bound to look very different through the eyes of bees. And in just the same way, the question ‘what are flowers good for?’ is a question that we have to look at through the eyes of bees.

Well as I say, we can’t see ultraviolet and it’s no use trying to capture what it would be that a bee would see if it looked at flowers. ll we can do is to play with a few tricks to get some flavor of what it might be like. Now, here is a row of tubes containing white substances, all different white substances. They all look alike, they all look white. But if we now expose them to ultraviolet light for a while, they glow different colors. Now, this is a bit of a cheat. We’re not actually seeing ultraviolet and none of those colors is actually ultraviolet: those are all visible colors that we can see. What we are doing though is using this as a kind of metaphor to show how what we see is changed in ultraviolet light. That isn’t what bees would see but it gives us an idea of how different things might look through the eyes of bees.

Actually, flowers probably look even more different because when bees see shape they see shape in a very different way from us. When a bee sees a complicated shape like this set of leaves here, or any of these flowers, it probably doesn’t see it as a shape like that. It probably sees this as something that we should call “flicker.” You see little light bulbs flickering in the flowers now and once again, that almost certainly isn’t quite what the bees see. But it’s likely to be a bit more like what the bees see than what we see when we see complicated shapes like that.

[...]

And in any case, we’re only using this strangeness as a parable for changing our point of view about who or what it is that flowers and all other living creatures are for the good of. So let’s now ask what bees are good for from the point of view of flowers? Well, flowers are sex organs, designed by natural selection to make male and female cells and bring them together. There are good genetic reasons that apply in most flowers, though not all, for making sure that they don’t mate with themselves. It would be all too easy for a flower to mate with itself: it’s got pollen and a stigma in the same physical flower, and they use bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators to transport the pollen from one flower to another. The usual way to do this is to bribe them with nectar. Here you see a hummingbird feeding from a flower with nectar. The bright colors are like Piccadilly Circus, it’s an advertisement telling the hummingbirds or bees to come and feed from here. Nectar is made specially for the purpose and it’s costly.

[...]

The pollination services offered by bees are truly massive. Somebody in Germany calculated that in Germany alone honeybees pollinated about 10 trillion flowers in the course of a single summer day. It’s also been calculated that about 30% of all human foods depend on bee pollination. If bees were wiped out, 30% of our food plants would be wiped out as well. The world of bees is totally dominated by flowers. I don’t just mean honeybees. There are lots and lots of species of bees, many of them are solitary, not living in hives. The larvae of bees are almost all fed on pollen.

[...]

So that’s what bees are doing, millions of times over, every day. They feed their larvae on it, their aviation fuel is nectar, and that’s entirely provided for them by flowers. They work hard for their nectar award. To make a 1 pound jar of honey, it’s been worked out the bees would have to visit about 10 million clover blossoms. So, flowers use bees and bees use flowers. Both sides in the partnership have been shaped by the other. Both sides, in a way, have been domesticated, cultivated, by the other. The ultraviolet garden is a two way garden. But just because flowers and bees have evolved towards partnership we mustn’t assume that creatures in general work in a friendly way for one another’s good. There are people who think that antelopes are there for the benefit of lions and lions are there for the benefit of antelopes, to keep their population down. And that’s just as much nonsense as the idea that oxen come willingly to the slaughter for the benefit of us.

[...]

We began by asking, what flowers were for? We considered various answers and eventually concluded that flowers are for the same thing as everything else in the living kingdoms: for spreading “copy me” programs about, written in DNA language. Flowers are for spreading around instructions for making flowers. Bees are for spreading around instructions for making bees. Elephants for spreading instructions for making elephants. And birds for making more birds.

And macaw’s colored feathers are for spreading copies of instructions for making more colored feathers. And that works, because the colored feathers are an advertisement that attracts macaws of the opposite sex. So genes that make colored feathers tend to get passed on to future generations because they are an effective advertisement to get mates who like those colored feathers. And you could say the same about wings. Wings, too, are tools for spreading genetic instructions for making wings into future generations of birds. They work by saving the lives of birds that have good wings and so they are good at flying, good at catching food, good at avoiding being eaten. So genes that make good wings get passed on and that’s why most birds have wings that work. [...]

Plants don’t have wings. Plants can’t fly. But from the plant’s point of view, it doesn’t need wings since it can borrow the bees and butterflies and hummingbirds’ wings. But now let’s shift our perspective and look at it from the point of view of the plant DNA. From the point of view of the plant DNA the bees’ wings might as well be plant wings.The bees’ wings are organs of flight that carry the plant’s genes about. Just as a macaw’s wings are organs of flight that carry macaw’s genes about. And we can say the same about the colors.

Flowers use bright colors in very much the same way as macaws use their bright colors. Both kinds of color are advertisements, both are used to attract winged-gene vehicles. In one case those winged-gene vehicles are female macaws, in the other case they are bees. But in both cases the result of the attraction is that genes are carried about. The macaws mate, so the genes that made that the male have attractive feathers are carried off in the female’s body. The bee gets dusted with pollen from a flower. So the genes that made the flower attractive to the bee are carried off on the body of the bee into the future, into future generations. So if you look at them in the right way, bees’ wings can really be called plant wings.

Now, that really is a different way of looking at things, isn’t it? A strange, and unfamiliar way. Yet it is a way that makes perfect sense when you think about it. A way of looking, which matches the strange otherworldliness of the ultraviolet garden.

In the context of the bees and flowers, one ceases to see domestication as artificial selection, but as rather various examples of self-feeding co-evolution. Suddenly, one begins to see canines in a very different light. Those who retain the belief we choose which dogs to mate are only deceiving themselves.

This was the system which worked for hunters and shepherds over the ages. As our society shifts from the back-breaking work of the fields to pushing papers around, the contract between dogs and men must be brought back to the negotiating table.

In the new draft two centuries ago, several groups of dogs forefeited their liberty for promise of safety. In the virtue of selfishness of propagating their genes, several breeds have gone to the extremes; and the English Bulldog has been very selfish indeed at the expense of their own health. The Bulldog sold the ability to cool themselves to capitalize on the tendency of humans equating anything with a squished-face as infantile. The appeal to flat face is so successful, no longer are the Bulldogs required to birth naturally as they can only exist through Caesarean sections; and once civilization crumbles, the bulldog is extinct. The dependence on technology will either be pivotal to their existence or their very undoing. In fact, the fate of Bulldog is so intertwined with technology, we believe they are worth propping up on a pedestal. Truly, the Bulldogs are the master of manipulating the middle-class.

However there is still hope in all of this. Lineages of moderate dogs will outlast the corrupted: the dogs who sacrifice themselves to the whims of the elites will run into a wall and will pay for their mistakes of not reading the fine lines; and those who found the right allies will prosper for many generations to come. However it is clear very few see the dog world in this manner as we, in our arrogance, only consider things from our point of view.

Images

Chris McGrath. 2009. Champion Dogs Compete At Westminster Dog Show Zimbio. http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/VO0oly_xjGV/Champion+Dogs+Compete+Westminster+Dog+Show/8NtZoUHDuZl/Scott+Sommer (accessed September 16, 2011). [Featured Image: Chris McGrath]

Growing Up in the Universe. YouTube. Directed by Stuart McDonald. 1991. Oxford, UK: Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, 2007. [Stills: Richard Dawkins Foundation]

Maamme Kirja 1876. Finland: Zacharias Topelius. [Illustration: Zacharias Topelius]

Marvin Pierce. 2010. Working Dogs Pierce’s Cow Dogs. http://www.piercesstockdogs.com/stories/ (accessed September 16, 2011) [Thumbnail: Marvin Pierce]

The Time Machine.  DVD.  Directed by George Pal. 1960. Culer City, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, 2000. [Photo: Metro Goldwyn-Mayer Studios]

 

Shorter Is Better

 Breeding, Ponderings  4 Responses »
Sep 192011
 

I am willing take the fall for this. If the co-author wishes to reveal her- or his identity, then by all means go ahead.

This satire was written a few months ago when shit really hits the fan for the Neapolitan Mastiff owners on Jemima Harrison’s Pedigree Dogs Exposed blog. For awhile, I considered not publishing this; but initially, this was co-authored with someone else and the travesty was meant to be leaked anonymously on a list-serv for circulation around the net; then pekingeseman from Pedigree Dogs Are Fine showed up, and threw the timing off, so it was never pushed. Such dry humour shouldn’t be seen in the same vein as excessively over-the-top caricatures.

However, in hindsight, there is not much to lose by publishing these fictional works villianizing the ribbon-chasers. Sadly, I wish I could say these are entirely fictional, but if I chose to directly re-post some of the things said in closed groups on Facebook and on forums, which would makes anyone vomit in their mouth, most people would dismiss the atrocities as lampoons; but truth really is stranger than fiction. The fictional works seem more realistic than reality in these cases, and thus are easier to stomach.

Why publish these if I might be ostracized? First off, breeders will always be in the marginal minority and are at the mercy of tax-paying pet owners. Judgement Day will come. Secondly, if I really need a dose of testosterone and actually feel compelled to possess a mastiff-type, there are already a few Livestock Guardian breeders out there, ranging from Great Pyrennes and Spanish Mastiff to Anatolian Shepherds and Caucasian Ovcharkas, who are more than glad to help me gets my rocks off. The people who breed these shepherd-types know they cannot afford to lose ties with the agricultural community as most urban districts are not appropriate homes. So there are self-checks in place.

However since I seem to have good rapport amongst both most show-ring spitz owners and among the purpose-bred breeders, might as well put this one out there. I am sorry, but if someone can turn an aboriginal strain of a landrace, which the Cane Corso also originates from, into a dog resembling Ron Jeremy’s scrotum, they deserve to be ridiculed.

I give you…

Shorter Is Better

5 blue-dilute mastiff puppies in a yard running toward the camera.

Beautiful, cute puppies.

Internationally, Animal Rights activists are claiming Neapolitan Mastiffs have a life expectancy of 2 point 33 years. This is factually wrong. The survey was done by the United Kingdom’s Kennel Club and only 9 of 90 sent out were returned. This is not universal.

USNMC CH Ironstone Bittume, bred by Dr. Sherilyn Allen and owned by Rosemary Rosensteel, lived to be over 12 years of age. She was one of the offspring of NMCA CH Islero del Bonrampino and Ironstone Andiama. Islero lived to be over 9 as did Andiama. All were large and type for their time.

While the Neapolitan Mastiffs in the United States of America are relatively long-lived, in Britain, the Neapolitan became popular among chavs. It became ethical to breed for short life expectancy to deter the youths from using these as status symbols and to spare the mature dogs of a harsh and perilous life of neglects and absence of veterinary care.

Good breeders should not be burdened to feed and care for dogs after their show career is over and dried up on the breeding circuit. With the Animal Rights people fighting at every turn to take our dogs away, a dog with a short lifespan is a blessing.

The majority of puppy buyers purchasing from a petstore are not ready for the burden of a life-time commitment to dog ownership. However petstores obtain their stocks from puppy-mills. It is an obligation to provide inquirers an alternative and safer venue with health guarantees. We are giving them a shot of having joys of puppyhood, and sparing them the mundane years of owning an senior dog.

The flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And the Neapolitan Mastiffs burn so very very brightly.

— Deedee, United Kingdom

Images

Flickr. “We are coming” Accessed March 10, 2011. http://www.flickr.com/photos/22388776@N06/2156460667/ [Image: Nancyk2008]

Perfection

 Closed Registry, Genetics and Health, Quotes  No Responses »
Mar 172011
 

“It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

– Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Just a quote from a famous French writer. While this quote applies to Saint Exupért’s experience as an aviator, it is strangely ironic, true and completely backward in other situations. His fictional works can be found on public domain in Canada.

What Antaresia Tells Us About Breeding

 Breeding, Genetics  8 Responses »
Dec 142010
 
 
“Stimson’s Python (Antaresia stimsoni)” via flickr.com

There is a popular notion in all animal-related hobby, whither it’s cats, dogs, fish, reptiles or fish: the animal must be kept pure for the sakes of conservation of the pedigree, the breed, the species or the strain. This notion of purity is rather Victorian, and people latches onto it quite well because it makes logical sense in our heads despite what experiences, emotions, science or history tell us. The case study of Antaresia, a group of small Australian pythons commonly kept as pets, ridicules the concept of “good genes.”

Antaresia, a genus best known in captivity as “Children’s Python” or the “Spotted Python,” has a rather interesting past. Australia banned the export of their native faunas for commercial purposes in the 1960s and 1970s, back when herpetoculture was still in its infancy. Strict regulations were imposed on overseas scientific and zoological researches of Australian critters. In fact, the Australian regulation on wildlife would later serve as a precedent to the rise of the U.N.-sanctioned CITES [Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.] At that time, any Antaresia python in captivity was simply known as “that brown snake.” People haven’t really worked out the kinks in breeding herptiles as a science, merely experimenting, at that point half a century ago.

So, why is Antaresia is so important? Wells and Wellington made a huge taxonomic mess, not just with Antaresia, but a whole skew of other Australian taxonomies as well. Prior to the controversial publication of ”A synopsis of the class Reptilia in Australia,” from the fabricated journal created by the duo, in which the paper was contriving new species and re-classifying existing ones without solid evidences, all Antaresia were considered as one species: Liasis childreni; which was formally named by British zoologist  John Edward Gray in 1842 after his own mentor, a curator of the British Museum, John George Children. Even though German naturalist Wilhelm Peters identified L. maculosus in 1873, later re-classified by Wells and Wellington in 1984, it was regarded as a synonym of L. childreni and the species was not verified until Kluge in 1993. The same thing would occurred with A. stimsoni, initially described by L.A.  Smith in 1985, and then later confirmed by Kluge once again. The same nightmarish scene will replay once again with Olive Stull’s L. c. perthensis, which would later be formalized as its own species within the Antaresia clade half a century later. But as luck would have it, despite attempts to suppress Wells and Wellington, for good reasons, the International Comission on Zoological Nomenclature recognized the rule of priority: who was first to name the species or genus, even though someone else did the work of identifying and describing the species or genus, would get first pick. With three newly recognized species, this would have a weird effect on herpetoculture.

Keep in mind, crossing species or even subspecies, let alone locality, in herpetoculture, similar to dog culture, is usually frown upon. Before 1990, many people were crossing Antaresia without even knowing the species divide existed since a “brown snake” was a “brown snake.” So as a result, many, if not all, of the Antaresia in captivity outside of Australia, are, in a intellectually honest sense, effectively crosses. Old-school keepers of Australian reptiles would regales about either how they selected certain individuals, deemed them as the “proper” specimens, culled the undesirables; or how they used to back-breed their collections to get the same patternings, girths and lengths accordingly to the descriptions of the individual species in the peer-reviewed papers. To an effect, it works, and most of the newcomers nowadays are none the wiser. This also creates the illusion the specimens in existing collections are straight from the pure stocks found in the wild. Of course, once in awhile, one would see a cross here and there, often passed on to someone else as reminiscent of an older collection or the crossings were unintentional. As a result, we now have the Stimson’s (A. stimsoni), Spotted (A. maculosa), Anthill (A. perthensis) and Children’s (A. childreni) available in collections.

Here and there, a tourist gets caught with a lizard down his pants. Of course, given the violate black markets in pets and drug-trafficking, since usually the two are intertwined,  it is entirely possible the descendants of all Australian pythons are not from the ones kept in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, it is entirely possible smuggled stocks were used to maintain purity, given one would occasionally see new species of protected varanoids in the hands of German, Dutch and Sinaporean collectors from time to time; but since no one in North America, who knowingly purchase smuggled stocks, would step forward due to CITES, Lacey Act in the United States and WAPPRIITA [Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act] in Canada, giving the government some muscles as backbone for Australia’s prosecution of wildlife smugglers internationally, the gritty details of the bloodlines perhaps will never be revealed; especially since one can easily say they obtained the specimens from an unproven founding stock in the 50s and 60s without being held accountable. Who knows how vital of a role freshly-smuggled specimen have in re-establishing species within the captive market. Speculations aside, it would be wise to work with the accounts and information already existing.

Whenever people mention the breed would be lost if they outcross to other dogs, the story of the little pythons is usually around the corner in the shadows. There is no reason whatsoever to think a breed is lost as long the landrace is kept intact. One can simply recreate from a larger gene pool.

So what does Antaresia tell us? Quite bit. In spite of the taxonomic confusion in the mid-80s to early-90s, hobbyists managed to restore, or more appropriately recreated, individual species for the captive-bred market out of a single similarly grouped set of pythons based on described phenotypes in scientific papers. To be fair, people shouldn’t think of captive-bred Antaresia as individual species in captivity given the shady history of imports and exports in combination with the taxonomic upheavals and the breeding practices which took place. Nevertheless, breeders brought forward four separate types out of a previously muddled gene pool. The history of Antaresia mocks the whole ideology behind maintaining pedigree, and record-keeping, in a Victorian sense of “keeping purity for purity sakes.”

Sources:
CITES. “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.” http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/text.shtml (14 December 2010).

Ross, R.A. “Successful mating and hatching of Children’s python, Liasis childreni,” HISS-NJ 1 no. 6 (1973)

Wells, R.W., and C.W. Wellington. “A synopsis of the class Reptilia in Australia.” Australian Journal of Herpetology 1, no. 3-4 (1984) (5 December 2010).

Kluge, A.G. “Aspidites and the phylogeny of pythonine snakes.” Records of the Australian Museum, Supplement 19 (1993) (5 December 2010).

International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. “Three works by Richard W. Wells and C. Ross Wellington: proposed suppression for nomenclatorial purposes.” Bulletin of Zoological Nomeclature 4, no. 48 (1991) (7 December 2010).

International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. “International Code of Zoological Nomenclature: Fourth Edition.” http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted-sites/iczn/code/ (7 December 2010).

Carnell University Law School. “United States Code: Title 16, Chapter 53– Control of Illegally Taken Fish and Wildlife.” http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/16/usc_sup_01_16_10_53.html (14 December 2010).

Canadian Department of Justice. “Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act.” http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showtdm/cs/W-8.5 (14 December 2010).

“German tourist caught smuggling lizards in his underwear.” The Local, 8 December 2009. http://www.thelocal.de/society/20091208-23791.html (8 December 2010)

“Man tried to smuggle snakes out of Australia in suitcase.” The Telegraph, 23 February 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4786263/Man-smuggled-snakes-into-Australia-in-suitcase.html (8 December 2010).

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