Re: breeding programs recognizing maintenance

Andrew Boyd (andrew at pcug.org.au)
Sun, 28 Apr 1996 09:21:03 +1000

At 07:43 PM 4/24/96 GMT, Cary wrote:
(snip)
>I for one am certainly interested. My local also gives points for
>rarity of the species. Unfortunately its also only for hobby rare
>fish. I'd like to point out a couple of my own thoughts for such a
>program for comments and input.
>You don't really want to be churning over generations of a species. So
>it would really be better to give points for maintaining a back up
>generation to the adult generation, but keeping the adults. Every year
>they could reproduce a new back up generation and get points when they
>turn over the old back up. This way you encourage them they to keep
>the older and more genetically diverse fish. The longer they can keep
>the older generation, the more points you could give. Also you could
>give an increased point level if people work together on a species.
>This way you could have fish from the same original colony but
>different parents and cross the lines together each generation or so.
>Again you can give points when they bring these lines together to
>produce a new adult generation.
>These are basically some of the guidelines I plan to use in the RSG's
>long term breeding program.

The problem with this is that there are a lot of fish that really don't last
more than one or two years, many of whom are of preservation interest, such
as Killifish and Blue-Eyes. You have to keep breeding the little suckers or
you lose them!

I think that one of the reasons ANGFA has steered clear of BAPs over the
years (this is not official policy, which I am not entitled to propagate,
merely observation) is that, when all is said and done, BAPs don't encourage
long-term maintenance of fish species.

Structured cooperative breeding programs, OTOH, have got a better chance of
achieving something, and I think that they need to be seperated from BAPs.
Have the BAPs as a fun thing, by all means, as a training encouragement for
newcomers to serious breeding.

>Any other ideas that could help to encourage people and improve on
>such a program, I would really be glad to hear. Maybe if we start a
>discussion here and flush out some good ideas we could get local
>aquarium societies to pick up on the ideas and add them to or expand
>their BAP programs to include them. Too many of these programs just
>churn over fish with out any thought to longer term species
>maintenance.

I'll send you a text file of our local aquarium society's handbook, Cary,
which contains a synopsis of our BAP, if you like. Let me know (and anyone
else who's interested) if you want it. As I mentioned in a previous
posting, the BAP is a bit flat at the moment, so I am interested in ideas to
revamp it.

Regards, Andrew Boyd
___________________________________________________________________
Andrew Boyd - andrew at pcug.org.au - http://www.pcug.org.au/~andrew
Ceteris Parbiter - Cavem Draconem
___________________________________________________________________