Questions for the genetics wizards out there - Page 1

I have read several postings on this site over the past couple of years upon which several of ya'll showed a keen understanding of genetics, so I have a few questions for ya.  I'm talking my hillbilly talk, so don't correct my spelling.  It is usually intentional to make ya'll "feel" at home with me :)

I have been away from posting for a while because  of my stupid dial up service and the length of time it takes to load a page due to the amount of pics (ads and such), which makes coming here not so much fun anymore.  I have ordered Hughes Net satellite internet service and it should be installed this week.  I can't wait.  But, I digress.

While I have been away, I have been starting a new hobby.  Racing homing pigeons.  I used to do it when I was in my twenties and am now starting again.  Anyway, to the point:

In racing pigeons, MOST breeders/fanciers inbreed heavily back to certain well know winning birds in the various strains and families of pigeons.  It is quite common for brother x mother and even brother x sister pairings, to get as close to the same gene pool as the famous winning ancestor those birds had.  This is done through many generations also, producing extremely heavy inbred birds.  The question is, are dogs a more complicated species than pigeons, which allows these two differing methods to be used?  I say this because the homing pigeon is very complicated (at least in my  lay mans way of looking at it) due to the sought after abilities to fly farther and faster than everyone elses birds, and the fact that scientists still do not have an answer for "how they do it" (ie; find their way home from never been to before locations).  The theories abound that it may be position of the sun, smells of the various locations of the earth, landmarks, magnetic fields of the earth being different, etc., but no one knows for sure.  Even blinded birds with magnets on their backs and their sense of smell removed, have shown they can go in the correct direction to get home, even walking!

Point is, in my view, pigeons are very complicated and I was wondering why inbreeding them has not produced bad results but it usually does in dogs?  Any thoughts why the differences.

No idea - but that is all very interesting.  I have a friend who has a white-dove service, he takes doves to weddings and releases them at the wedding (hired to do so) or event, then drives home and the birds arrive home in good timing depending on how far away they were - they must be related to homing pigeons?  It's very interesting that all senses can be taken away and they still somehow know how to make it home, from locations new to them.

molly

wait a sec... so say "ya'll" is stupid hillbilly talk?

Do Right, I cannot say for sure as I am not a biologist, but I think mammals (in this case dogs) are a more evolved species than birds. I recall the evolutionary order in this arrangement: single-cell animals, shellfish/mollusks (one leg towards insects, one leg towards fish), fish, amphibians, reptiles (one leg towards birds and one leg towards mammals) mammals and finally Homo Sapiens-the ultimate mammal.

I know that invertebrates and vetebrates (amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) have virtually identical internal organs yet have significant differences in the construction of their hearts, i.e. one-chamber, two-chamber, three-chamber, and finally the four-chamber configuration that is typical of mammals. I do remember conversations from old science teachers who stated that essentially the higher place a species has on the evolutionary ladder makes it a more refined and complex organism.

So perhaps that explains why birds (thought to be a "lower" species than mammals) have fewer complications from inbreeding, natural or intended, than occurs in mammals. And of course we know that the breeding habits of wild dogs is a matter of who is the dominant dog who cares not about his realtion to the other members of his pack. Do Right this is an interesting discussion. I hope that someone such as Diane Seaman comes across this topic and offers her input.

Regards,

Bob-O

Each Species has it's own unique tolerance level to inbreeding.

Very Notable GSD breeders in the USA of Long ago would advise.

If you are starting out with a mediocre bitch ( something to that affect).

Breed her back to the Best ancestor in her pedigree that is still alive and able service,

and pick the best female puppy from the litter, and continue the breeding program with her.

Whatever,

I never agreed with it but the ones who believed this have records in the breed

( in the USA, and many decades ago ) that are incredable.

I have heard also more than one dog person tell me that by inbreeding you get a litter of Really good

and Really bad pups, ( in the same inbred litter) that you get the extremes in the same litter. ( I don't believe that either)

I believbe you get what you put into it. Great pups if the parents are great individuals and less great pups

if the parents are Mediocre. Also if the parents carry any undesirable resessives for disease in common ( more likely if related) You have a good chance of affected puppies being produced.

The most extreme form of inbreeding in the GSD breed I have ever seen is " Eko-Lan's Loner"

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/403563.html

Some years Back we convinced the breeder to talk about this female

he explained to us that

he started by breeding his best dog to Pet quality bitch " Southern Belle IV"

from the litter he told us he chose the most Correct female

" Pride of Ramblewood" and bred her back to her Sire " Eko-Lan's Aragon".

From this litter, he again chose the most correct female " Eko-Lan's Flame of Aragon"

and bred this female back to " Eko-Lan's Aragon" to produce a litter and chose the most

correct female

"Eko-Lan's Loner"

By the time Eko-Lan's Loner was of breeding age I think her sire was no longer able to mate, or maybe had died,

So the breeder chose to breed " Eko-Lan's Loner " to his Select Am Ch Male " Eko-Lan's Morgan"

and from the litter he got a Select Male Champion Eko-Lan's Quasar CD

He stressed to us that he always chose the most correc t female from these inbreedings, not the best show dog.

I think Eko-Lan's Loner is the most inbred GSD in the breed I know.

With Betta Fish, it is the norm to breed Siblings together for several generations.

I have some stock, and I am doing only outcrosses to see if I can prove Quality can come from

outcrosses, and that what matters is the quality of the two parents,

not the relation they have to one another. :-)

Jo-Ann

DO RIGHT:   ONE OF THE OWNERS OF A GREAT FEMALE I BRED, IS AN         AVIARY JUDGE "  VERY ACCOMPLISHED AND BREEDS AND SHOWS IN USA AND CANADA AND JUDGES ALL OVER BOTH....WE HAD THIS DISCUSSION ABOUT MY BLOODLINES AND PEDIGREES AND BIRDS AND HOW HE BREEDS...

i WILL FORWARD THIS THREAD TO HIM ,,,,HE IS RETIRED FROM THE  US  FORESTRY SERVICE ,,,,HERE IN TEXAS....I BET HE WOULD HAVE SOME REMARKS ON THIS.....

Jo-Ann, I took a peek at that link and I agree that is a most interesting tidbit from the pedigree archives. Overall I think (and I could easily be wrong) that the Lance of Fran-Jo was the most prolific stud male used for the serious inbreeding that occurred here fourty (40) years ago or so in order to reproduce the Lance "type" desired by A.K.C. fanciers.

I will add that I have heard about (but never saw) the same results by those who choose to breed dogs very closely, i.e. one-half (1/2) of the litter had reinforced excellent traits and the other one-half (1/2) had reinforced problems. I really doubt the genetic distribution is 50:50 as although that is the accepted distribution theory it seldom happens in nature to that degree of perfection. 

I know that in many generations of certain groups of humans, certain inheritable diseases were continually passed to successive generations due to close inbreeding either by choice or necessity. Interesting subject, no doubt as it relates to what is stated by the applied genetic theory for inheritability versus the true outcome.

Regards,

Bob-O

Canines most likely have a lot more genes in their genome than do birds.

By the way, Do Right, the usage of "ya'll" is funny a bit in regards to me. I often meet people who ask "where are you from?" To that I reply "well, I have lived in the yous guys part of the country, the ya'll part of the country, the you'ins part of the country and have returned to the ya'll part and loving it." 

Regards,

Bob-O

Molly:  just to clarify your posting for your interest.  Racing pigeons are actually doves, in the strict sense of the species.  Making "white dove" releases, which are popular in weddings and such, a release of white homing pigeons.  The difference being, between them (white pigeons) and racing pigeons ( which color should not be a factor as you are breeding for performance, not color) sort of like a quarter horse vs a thoroughbred racing horse.  Both can get you from point a to point b, but the throughbred horse can get you there faster.  I hope I explained that correctly.

By the way, a point of interest.  The last known "Passenger Pigeon", of which there used to be billions of them across the U.S (much like there was with the buffalo), died in the Cincinnati Zoo, I believe in 1961.  Her name was Martha.  They are now extinct most likely.  There is also a breed of pigeon known as the "carrier pigeon", which is not a homing pigeon.  There are many, many different spieces of Pigeons (doves).

Homing pigeons were used in almost all of our past wars, except in the very modern age (even used in Viet Nam), to send messages, as radio communications were hap hazard or non existant.  Homing pigeons have been awarded medals, just like dogs have, in relation to war heroics and such.  They are facinating.  A good pigeon can come home from a thousand miles away, in a few days (600 miles in one day), from a location that they have never been to before.  Not always, because of many factors, hawks, weather, power lines, etc., but it is common for them to be able to do these feats. 

When I lived in N.C. and moved to Cleveland, I was given a hen pigeon that was thirteen years old (that is about their life expectancy) by a friend who said to me to try and get a fertile egg from her if you can as she breeds winners.  Well, she got out on me and I assumed at her age that she probably did not live long in the wild.  I got a letter from the man that had given her to me, about a month later, asking me if I had lost something.  Yep, she had went home.  We figured it out that it was over eight hundred miles (airline distance) from my home to his.  He then told me that she had not been outside of his loft for over twelve years as he was afraid of losing her to hawks or whatever, because she was such a valuable breeder for him.  

Additionally, they can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and prizes in races can be hundreds of thousands of dollars also.  Back in the late 70's or early 80's, it was reported that the black country music singer Charlie Pride paid 250 thousand for a bird.  Now, that figure is not uncommon for a bird, even more has been reported.  I would hazard a guess that pigeons have sold for more than any GSD ever has.  But that would be understandable, since a pigeon could win new cars and/or hundreds of thousands of dollars in races, and be paid thousands for its offspring, much like some GSD's.

The Coast Guard recently tried experiments using pigeons in a glass bubble underneath their rescue aircraft, one bird pointing in each of four directions, to locate survivors in large bodies of water.  The birds were trained to peck a certain button or object upon seeing something unusual in the water, and in return they would get a treat.  This would notify the pilot which direction to travel, looking for survivors.  This was done due to the great vision of the pigeons.  The funding for this endeavor was pulled and it is my understanding that they no longer do this, but apparently it was successful, so I do not know whay they pulled the funding for it.

Back to the genetics issue.  Bob-o probably has it explained correctly, that the mammal is a higher involved species of living thing, but no