Re: Egg Eating Thoughts

["Bailin Shaw" <bailin_shaw@hotmail.com>]

This is exactly what I want to try.  I can get my hands on some pretty 
robust commercially bred rams.  However, I can't seem to locate the wild 
rams.  The experiments would be very interesting.

Boy, if I knew the reaction I was going to stir up, I would have kept to 
lurking.

Bailin

>From: Travis Dahl KE4VYZ <dahlt@umich.edu>
>Reply-To: apisto@majordomo.pobox.com
>To: apisto@listbox.com
>CC: dahlt@umich.edu
>Subject: Egg Eating Thoughts
>Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2000 11:26:48 -0400
>
>    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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