Peter , I thank you for spreading the discussion to one of my concerns - the effect of habitat alteration on behaviour , even something as basic as breeding, especially initiation of spawning, mate attracting behaviour etc. It makes me reflect on the diff
iculty we, as aquarists often have inducing new( to us as aquarium subjects that is) species to breed. We often excuse our lack of success on everything under the sun (wrong food, wrong time of the year, day. weather, day length, water etc etc) but deep d
own it is simply altered habitat.
Remember how hard DIscus were to breed initially and now they'll breed in almost any kind of water (comparitively), similarly for many other species of trade tropicals. Presumably the continuous aquarium breeding, usually no longer under optimal condition
s, causes some kind of change in the ?instinctive code for breeding in that strain.
I remember when I used to breed various Corydoras catfish and it used to irk me that I could breed 8-10 species, some of which were wild caught, but I could never induce my favourites (C. arcuatus) to reproduce. Surely there is a large number of potential
study projects for aquarists, students, researchers etc in this particular field.
Back to the question of translocations - is there any published literature on the numbers of individuals needed to successfully translocate a species? I recall that the geneticists calculated 500 0r so individuals were needed to maintain genetic viability
in a population so why wouldn't these same figures pertain to a population being translocated for it to survive. If so then it is most unlikely that this will ever accidentally happen. Perhaps this argument could be developed in our approach re "Fish Ban
s"
Bruce Hansen ANGFA
Attachment Converted: c:\eudora\attach\RE Translocations (was import