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New blood


yasha2802

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I was reading/watching a little about breeding roaches and that you sometimes needed to add new blood or they start dying off. I can fully understand that being true but leaves me with a few questions.

1: How often should you add new blood?

2: Is it best to go with males, female or just random babies to mix in?

3: If I were to get a group of 100 now (from the same place) and split them in two different breeding bins if I were to mix them down the road would that be like adding new blood or would they still be to closely related?

 

Also can someone tell me or point me to a post telling me how many roaches I could have in what size tube/How maybe egg crates for how many roaches? Mainly talking about feeder dubia atm, but i also want to get some B.fusca and other pets/feeders.

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Most of the species currently in the hobby come in on just single imports, and were started with just a handful of individuals, and have been inbred over many generations, with no ill effect.

So not only would you not be able to increase genetic diversity much by introducing new members to your colony, (on account of them all sharing the same ancestors), but it also seems like inbreeding doesn't affect roaches negatively, so long as you cull deformed or weak individuals and try to limit your colonies to healthy individuals only of course. :)

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When you start a colony of thousands from 2 individuals and there are no weird issues you've gotta assume inbreeding doesn't really affect them. That being said I have noticed that not all breeders have the same sized stock. Not that they are unrelated but that their specific strain may have been primarily smaller/larger/lighter/darker. So if you're looking for certain traits it may be worthwhile getting several strains regardless if they are related from the initial imports. As for sizes to add, not sure, adults probably for the fastest results. 

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It’s actually interesting to think about. I have been in pest control for 17 years, and it seems the typical infestation only begins with one female.There was a 16 floor building in Louisville infested horribly with bedbugs (I know not roaches but insects so point remains). U.K. Entomologist department DNA tested them and determined they all came from a single ancestor. So it would appear insects do not suffer from inbreeding in the same way as vertebrates.

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Thank you guys for the reply.

 

I think for now I'll still keep 3 separate containers. 2 for 2 different breeders and one with a few feeders so I dont have to bug my main 2 containers as much.

1st set I started with around 300 very small nymphs, a hand full which are now pushing 1inch

2nd set I'm getting is a mix of 1inch to sub adults(dont know if you use that term with roaches).

That way if one of them seems weaker then the other or I have a problem with one I still hopefully have a healthy container.

Then my little shoe box of around 20-30 nymphs for feeding off, as to not bug the main colonies much. Not sure if I really have to worry about that or not. I just read you can stress them out if you bug them to much. Either way I still like the shoe box as it makes it easier to pick a few out be it for holding or feeding.

 

On 1/15/2018 at 4:06 PM, Hisserdude said:

Most of the species currently in the hobby come in on just single imports, and were started with just a handful of individuals, and have been inbred over many generations, with no ill effect.

So not only would you not be able to increase genetic diversity much by introducing new members to your colony, (on account of them all sharing the same ancestors), but it also seems like inbreeding doesn't affect roaches negatively, so long as you cull deformed or weak individuals and try to limit your colonies to healthy individuals only of course. :)

Thank you. Being as there entertaining for us but also a food source for my other pets it shouldn't be to hard to cull the colony but knowing me I'll end up liking the odd balls and have to set a new home up for them to live as just pets.

 

12 hours ago, vfox said:

When you start a colony of thousands from 2 individuals and there are no weird issues you've gotta assume inbreeding doesn't really affect them. That being said I have noticed that not all breeders have the same sized stock. Not that they are unrelated but that their specific strain may have been primarily smaller/larger/lighter/darker. So if you're looking for certain traits it may be worthwhile getting several strains regardless if they are related from the initial imports. As for sizes to add, not sure, adults probably for the fastest results. 

I guess in a few months I may get to see some of those little differences myself. My 1st set is from New Mexico, My 2nd set is from California and I've really been thinking of getting a set from Texas and locally. So I may like going over bored.  Start with 1 type and want as many different colonies as I can get as well as wanting to go out and get about 10 different kinds(B.fusca, T.petivriana and/or T.regularis, G.centurio, N.rhombifolia, A.tesselata to name a few.) Maybe should ask about some options on some of them later.

 

4 hours ago, Matttoadman said:

It’s actually interesting to think about. I have been in pest control for 17 years, and it seems the typical infestation only begins with one female.There was a 16 floor building in Louisville infested horribly with bedbugs (I know not roaches but insects so point remains). U.K. Entomologist department DNA tested them and determined they all came from a single ancestor. So it would appear insects do not suffer from inbreeding in the same way as vertebrates.

Interesting. I really would have thought it would have affected them in some way like over years and years make them weaker or smaller/big as they get the trait over and over from the family.

I know with fish it doesn't really work like mammals but after some time if you breed a family they do seem to get weaker(possibly shorter life or birth defects) as well as making and undesirable traits more pronounced.

I really do want healthy happy roaches not just roaches that live long/breed fast enough to use as a food source for my Ts.

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It is quite interesting; I would think a geneticist would be able to spew all kinds of interesting facts about the subject that I wouldn't understand.

People are theorizing that the bedbug explosion is in-part due to the ability to inbreed.  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111206115049.htm

Found an old post where Matt K makes some assertions  

 

I have breeding rabbits for about a while.  Inbreeding, or a lesser severity of inbreeding, called line breeding, has been happening with domestic animals for hundreds or even thousands of years.  On the surface it doesn't seem to be as bad as I was lead to believe when I was younger.  Even with wild rabbits and other animals, father-daughter breeding has quite common for probably millions of years.  Now, if you try to graph the inbreeding, assuming an inbreeding coefficient of 1 is brother - sister, studies showed that within 8 to 10 generations of mice the bottleneck was dropping fertility.  Note that brother and sister, while they share many genes, are still getting a different mix of the parent's genes so it takes multiple generations of brother-sister to approach a homozygous population.  I think this is probably not happening a lot in multiple consecutive generations in our roach buckets so there is still a pool and some competition within the buckets, perhaps not a very diverse one but there is still some variability.  And according to many opinions, I guess it may not matter much even if it did.

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One of the many reasons that genetic charting is important for species identification. Again, going back to the US black winged Blaberus craniifer vs the European brown winged Blaberus craniifer. The original specimen in the books shows brown wings but it's unknown if that specimen has the same genetic makeup as the black winged versions found native in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean. Most folks in the hobby view them as two distinct species with the black winged being the true phenotype while the brown winged is a close relative (possibly a natural hybrid) but a different species. The hairs on the elytra are where most of the confusion stems from. It's possible they are the same species but just different color morphs that naturally occurred, similar to the random yellow Gyna lurida or black Periplaneta americana. Again, roaches are horribly under studied. 

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2 hours ago, Test Account said:

I found a sci article stating that ladybugs did not do well unless fresh genes were introduced.          Will find later

Beetles seem to be more sensitive to inbreeding, many of the Rhino and stag beetle species will die out within a few generations unless new bloodlines are thrown in, at least that's what many of the breeders say. Most roaches don't seem to care at all though, thankfully. :)

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