> I do have some doubts about the practicality of the whole captive maintenance
> thing when done outside an organized framework. Some years ago, I spent time
> figuring out the numbers of fishes involved in attempting to maintain a
> certain level of genetic diversity over a long period of time; the results
> were staggering. It seems to me that most people who were trying to maintain
> a species would either end up doing too much inbreeding, or would swap with
> only a couple of other aquarists, effectively creating one population pool
> which would in itself be subject to too much inbreeding fairly soon as well.
A further note on inbreeding. What's better, to maintain a fish in
captivity with perhaps a 20% loss in genetic diversity, or to lose 100%
of it's genetic diversity when it goes extinct in the wild when no
captive stocks are kept?
Hooroo
Peter