Does inbreeding affect fire salamanders?

[jme2049]

Hi this is first post and i was wondering if anyone could clear this up for me. I have a pair of adult fire salamanders they had babies a little under a year ago. what i want to know is how long it will take for the young to be sexually mature and if inbreeding occurs in this species? They are the salamadra terrestris species.
Thanks in advance for any help. cheers.

 

[Jennewt]

They should reach maturity at around 2-4 years of age, depending on a lot of factors. They will inbreed, if permitted to do so. In most cases, there are no problems with inbred offspring from caudates. However, it certainly isn't the ideal situation, and if problems arise in later generations it will always be possible that the inbreeding was partly to blame.

 

[jme2049]

Thanks for the reply, really cleared a couple of things up for me there. I don't think i want the babies breeding with each other when the time comes. I wouldn't want to do that to future generations.

 

[Coastal Groovin]

I think there is enough evidence that proves inbreeding does effect caudata species. Inbreeding has effected Ambystoma mexicanum. There are numerous genetic problems with them and animals are even sold to educational institutions with specific abnormalities. I think this can be directly traced to the very small population of axolotls that all axolotls morphs were started from. Another caudata that suffers from genetic abnormalities is Triturus marmoratus. They can have up to a 50% percent die off during one particular stage of embryo development. I know I read somewhere that one theory was that this species suffered a huge die off sometime in their recent history.Inbreeding is thought to have affected them in this very negative way. It should be attempted to introduce new animals to any breeding program. It is true for every other animal on the planet I can't see any reason to think that it is not important for our salamanders and newts.

 

[Azhael]

The 50% die off thing of T.marmoratus has nothing to do with inbreeding. All Triturus share a chromosomal condition that makes 50% abort in midway through development. This is natural, and affects ALL Triturus.
I suspect T.marmoratus is affected by inbreeding, but the effects are not the 50% situation.

Jme, just so you know what you have is Salamandra salamandra terrestris (a subspecies native to southern to central europe). As Jen, said, a generation of inbreeding is very unlikely to have any visible effects, but if you can avoid it, all the better!

 

[Coastal Groovin]

How did they get this chromosomal defect? Animals are not generally defective unless something negative have happened to them

 

[Azhael]

I used to think the same way. Now i think that just because the mechanism is not well understood, it doesn´t mean it´s a deffect.

I have no idea how they got it, but as i said it´s common to ALL Triturus. T.marmoratus, T.pygmaeus, T.cristatus, T.carnifex, T.karelinii, T.dobrogicus, T.macedonicus....all of them share this condition, and each and every single individual carries it.
Clearly, this mechanism must have appeared in a common ancestor. It´s also to be expected that there is a purpose to it, because the genus is wide-spread and succesful, which means it doesn´t have much of an impact on their hability to survive.

 

[Coastal Groovin]

THERE IS SOME FACT AND THEORY HERE ON MY PART. The fact that all these species suffer from the same genetic defect just helps us show that they all have a comman ancester. But what caused this defective chromosome in the first place thousnds of years ago? I can only think of three causes. The first would be inbreeding. The second would be some kind of man made chemical. Which did not exist hundreds of thousands of years ago. So we can eliminate that. The third is space radiation from an exploding comet. I'm not joking with that. We know that happened over Russia. So Im going to go with a enviromental change that critically lowered their numbers. Someting like an ice age. The fact that a species with maybe only a few dozen animals left could created all those species has been proven by Darwin's finches. Well atleast to us evolutionists. The negative effects on chromosomes has been seen in isolated popultaions of humans. Spontanious abortions is one of these problems. There are also certain genetic probems that are known to certain breeds of dog. I think it is very important to out breed your animals with new unrelated animals. Most of our cb animals have only been bred for a very limited amount of generations. There is no telling what defects will arise a hundred or even just a few dozen gerations down the line. This also why people are trying to start stud books on this site. I beleive that Axoltls and T. marmoratus with their genetic problems are examples of why genetic deversity is important when you breed salamanders and newts.