Breeding. Can u mix diff panthers

Andee said:
And the "Florida Panther" is globally no longer recognized as a sub-species, only in scientific research and such is it considered a sub-species.
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A perfect example of why fluid definitions of species aren't best used for preserving animals. Anyone whose seen both knows mountain lions and Florida panthers are very different cats. Though now obviously much less different.
 
But honestly half the time people these days aren't trying to "preserve" a species when they buy an animal, they want a pet. If they want to help preserve a species, then they will do the testing and breeding to preserve the species. And those are who SHOULD work on preserving the species. Otherwise we really just need to work on spaying and somehow neutering all chameleons. But generally if you ask me, we shouldn't buy chams anymore XD
 
If captive breeding isn't for the purpose of species preservation, we should all just buy wild caught chameleons. They're cheaper.
 
Captive breeding is in a way and it isn't I know lots of people who just love the species or people who want to make money. I generally don't think chameleons should be kept in captivity at all because in general they survive and there are those every now and then who randomly do horrible for honestly no real reason. Then there are also the people who screw up on their own. It's why I will never buy from a breeder again. I fundamentally believe they shouldn't be kept, even if CBB
 
I think Andee is right in that most people are just buying a pet. CB chams just happen to be better adapted to captivity which has an added benefit of reducing pressure on wild populations. That said, I think some people SHOULD be working to keep some populations of pure locality animals. This is especially true with habitat loss going at its current rate. The problem is how do we prevent genetic bottlenecking of the species we are trying to preserve once most of the wild population and habitat is gone? I think that once we hit a certain level of species decline it becomes infinitely harder to preserve that species due to loss of genetic frequency. Feel free to comment as I love when people express ideas as long as everybody remains civil.
 
Andee said:
Captive breeding is in a way and it isn't I know lots of people who just love the species or people who want to make money. I generally don't think chameleons should be kept in captivity at all because in general they survive and there are those every now and then who randomly do horrible for honestly no real reason. Then there are also the people who screw up on their own. It's why I will never buy from a breeder again. I fundamentally believe they shouldn't be kept, even if CBB
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In the perfect world we wouldn't interfere at all just like you're saying. But that's not the world we live in unfortunately.

The fact is it's on us as a community to do our part to preserve the animals we claim to love.
 
Oh we are fine, we have messaged and cleared the air a bit, we are both pretty good at keeping civil with each other. What I think is important is not working too much of deforestation currently since in my opinion that isn't the biggest issue anymore (surprising to what a lot of people think) I think most of the issue currently especially with chams is fragmentation and sadly it is easier to fix that deforestation issues from what I know. But I don't know if Fucifer Pardalis is one of the ones being affected by fragmentation as well? I assume so? It would be a quicker and faster fix while deforestation is slowly worked on.

And then we have the specific breeders who work on the clean lines. Sadly I know it's all probably a pipe dream. I mean currently the reefs though they are trying to build more will not be able to be fixed until the over all temperature of the oceans go down. So generally there is so much in so many webs that affect everything... it's so sad in a way that it can't all be fixed by fixing one simple thing. .___. *grumps at stupid humanity*
 
And with chameleons there is never ending learning! it's one reason I love them so much. I also love invertebrates because of that.
 
I find this debate to be very interesting.

I just wanted to touch on the comment that locales are not species. A recent study did in fact lean towards 11 species of furcifer pardalis on Madagascar. If you read the attached article, you will see that they do - in smaller numbers - interbreed amongst species. However, for the most part, they stick to their own species for breeding. These 11 species they talk about are distinguishable by their markings - what we call locales. This is why you can often tell the locale by it's markings and then sometimes, it's quite difficult to narrow down exactly what locale it is. Each locale is, according to this article, it's own species.

So species/locales are quite interchangeable. Article is here...

https://www.livescience.com/50983-photos-panther-chameleon-11-species.html

I also wanted to add my own 2 cents in here. I have never crossed locales in my breeding project before. However, I would consider it in the future to see what colour combinations result. I do feel strongly that the offspring should be advertised as crosses and understand that any subsequent breeding to pure lines can dilute the gene pool of captive bred populations. For that reason, I may attempt to in the future but my main focus is to produce 'locale pure' offspring that reflect the traits that we have come to expect in that locale.
 
Thanks for clearing that up, I was honestly having a hard time finding the different species names so I assumed it was different than the locales otherwise I didn't think it would be as hard XD
 
I read the report that the above article is based on. I will try to find it. In the conclusions they were leaning toward 11 different species based on their limited sampling but it was only a preliminary study and they felt further research was needed. They also mentioned that the pet populations they sampled were not representative of the wild population they were supposed to be, as in they were crossed or miss named.
I suspect the miss naming goes all the way back to the export process where poor communication or intentional miss naming to sell them as a popular locale occurs. I bet that continues as they breed and sold here as well.
I find it interesting that these crosses of different "species" aren't sterile like ligers or mules.
 
Andee said:
I honestly would never buy a cross-locale unless it's got a percentage and lineage that can be traced. That's doing it right. The thing with locales in the wild you may be told this species is this locale, because of where it is picked up, unless you get it's DNA tested (from what I understand about DNA testing with locales) there is no 100% way to know this animal is a pureline. Sorry but chams can cross into other territories, it may be rare, but totally possible. I would not be surprised if over half the animals we think are one locale are either a completely different one or a mix.
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This reminds me of what happened to Nosy Faly locale. They have been mixed with other locales in the wild. People released other locales in the Faly area and it is very hard to know if a female is a faly or a cross. A real shame. One of my favourite ones.
 
JoeDigiorgio said:
That really just comes down to reputable importers. Believe it or not locales of panthers and most other animals rarely hybridize. Not because they won't but because by nature, locales develop because of some boundary dividing them to begin with.

I know this better in clownfish and flasher wrasses because I don't know the geography of Madagascar like I do Indonesian seas but without some sort of natural or man caused mixing, crossings only happen in uncommon areas where both locales border each other.
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Biologically speaking this is known as Allopatric Speciation where a physical boundary of some sort keeps two or more populations of a species that are genetically closely related from one another.

The physical boundary could be something like a mountain range, body of water, or even a human city.

This leads to Genetic Divergence of a species and over a long period of time can result in their DNA differing enough to call them different species all together.

Change in ecology (local fauna, flora, and climate) can drive genetic divergence in many many different directions!
 
But their physical boundaries aren't huge like that in ranges where they are found from what I understand, honestly there aren't huge cities in Madagascar especially in the North eastern and Northern parts from what I know. And Madagascar is rather weird with how it seperates into different territories from what I have learned, it has extreme different areas yes that would cause the issues of crossing that we talked about, but they are usually on rather different parts of the island. Most places that panthers are found are considered the tropical forest (?) (sorry if it's not correct my brain is slow this morning and can't seem to wake myself well. I think I have been too sleep deprived lately) Will have more firm geography locations in a few hours likely. ^^
 
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