Egg Eating Thoughts

[Travis Dahl KE4VYZ <dahlt@umich.edu>]

   Wow, this whole thread has been fascinating andmaking me think.
   I do think it would be possible for commercially-bred rams to "lose"
their parenting abilities, at least in theory.  Even if it's not a learned
charcteristic, if you have enough generations where you take them away from
their parents and raise them yourself, it would be possible for a genetic
mutation to limit or eradicate the parenting aspects.  (This is not
inevitable, however.)
   I guess the real question is if fry raised by commercial parents tend to
have the same problems...That would kind of point to it not having been
genetically removed.  (Or being a learned characteristic.)
   I have this idea kicking around in the back of my head where you would
start with a pair of wild-caught rams and a pair of commerically-bred rams.
 You'd spawn the F0s and remove half of the eggs to hatch artificially.
Then you'd use a pair from the parent-raised and a pair-from the
hobbyist-raised and see if one group has significantly better parenting
instincts.  Then you could tell if it was learned behaviour or not...
   Then take the commercially-bred rams and spawn them.  Take some of the
eggs and raise them without the parents.  Do they have significantly worse
parenting instincts?  What if (somehow) you manage to get the commercial
parents to raise their young?  Any differences?
   The other thing, and I don't know if rams would do it, is if you could
somehow swap the eggs from the commercial fish with the wild.  Then you
could watch these fry who's real parents are bad parents being raised by
these foster parents who are great.
   Anybody have any thoughts on whether these experiments would make sense
or are worthwihile?
          -Travis



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