Fulica .. ?

[Katie]

Soo, i was reading through some of the older posts in this section from, like, years ago, and came across one about the inbreeding of Fulica, which i found pretty interesting.

It was mostly about inbreeding being the reason why Fulica sizes are shrinking, (i didn't know they were, but apparently they are). Soo, i'm surious now, because someone had said that Fulica used to reach sizes of about 17cm?

Exactly how big did they used to grow? And in the wild, seeing as theres much less chance of inbreeding etc, do they still get this big?

Katie x

[coyote]

I recall seeing that thread; it was quite interesting. Do you think you could find it again and post a link here?

[Katie]

yep sure, it was this one

Did anyone try the healthy breeding, to get the snails shells bigger again? I would be very interested in trying this

[lee2211]

Jun 26, 2010 16:39:52 GMT Katie said:

yep sure, it was this one

Did anyone try the healthy breeding, to get the snails shells bigger again? I would be very interested in trying this

They can't, they're all so inbred now it's beyond belief! Due to mislead owners not knowing what to do, or thinking they can make money they've all mated together and there now isn't very many snails that aren't related.

[coyote]

One solution would be to introduce more WC fulicas into people's breeding stock.

[Katie]

Jun 26, 2010 20:04:02 GMT coyote said:

One solution would be to introduce more WC fulicas into people's breeding stock.

Where do you get WC Fulica from? I'v only ever seen Margies and Tigers x

[lee2211]

From Africa.

[Katie]

Sorry, i was unclear :/
I meant like, at Brixton for example, i'v ever only heard of people finding WC Margies and Tigers there. Never Fulica? Are their people who bring them in to the UK ect?

[coyote]

Have you looked on ebay for WC fulica?

[Katie]

Hmm, no, i shall go try! x

[morningcoffee]

Jun 27, 2010 15:12:36 GMT Katie said:

Sorry, i was unclear :/
I meant like, at Brixton for example, i'v ever only heard of people finding WC Margies and Tigers there. Never Fulica? Are their people who bring them in to the UK ect?

Fulica are apparently not considered very good to eat, and margies and tigers are considered to be the "tastiest". That's why fulica are usually not imported to the UK African food shops. I've heard that there are some efforts in parts of Africa to persuade locals to collect and eat fulica instead, as there are so many of them, and margies and tigers are becoming rarer in some places due to many of them being caught and eaten.

[lee2211]

Jun 28, 2010 11:12:18 GMT morningcoffee said:

Jun 27, 2010 15:12:36 GMT Katie said:

Sorry, i was unclear :/
I meant like, at Brixton for example, i'v ever only heard of people finding WC Margies and Tigers there. Never Fulica? Are their people who bring them in to the UK ect?

Fulica are apparently not considered very good to eat, and margies and tigers are considered to be the "tastiest". That's why fulica are usually not imported to the UK African food shops. I've heard that there are some efforts in parts of Africa to persuade locals to collect and eat fulica instead, as there are so many of them, and margies and tigers are becoming rarer in some places due to many of them being caught and eaten.

I heard this too!

[lee2211]

Sorry Katie, I knew what you meant.
It was a desperate attempt to be funny

[Katie]

Oh aha, i see. Sorry

I couldn't find any WC Fuli on ebay, it was all just 'Fulica Eggs x 100' and 'GALS babies x2'
I'll do a google search on it tonight, see what that comes up with

I would be very interested on getting myself a WC Fulica, and breeding it with rony, my biggest snail, to see what the babies come out like

Katie x

[lee2211]

Yes, but what would you do with all the babies afterwards?
Trust me, I'm not having a dig, but it's damn hard to get rid of Fuli babies. I recued 100, about 4 months ago, and now I still have 40 left.
I'm sure the WCxCB would be a unique selling point, but I'm finding it hard to see how much difference that would make. Your best bet would be 2 WC Fulis, it might make more of a difference.

[Katie]

Hmm, yes, thats a point. Unless i could gte a bunch of people together who would be willing to keep the babies for me, and only hatch, say, half a batch every year?
I'm not sure, didn't really think of all this haha.
But i'v got plenty of time anyways, i wouldn't be aloud to get a WC until i'v left home, which gives me atleast 2 years planning lmao x

[aerliss]

The outbreeding of depression can be accomplished in a single generation usually. Within three generations of outbreeding all signs of inbreeding should be virtually diminished.

Unless we began with only two fulicas and never introduced any more, the inbreeding problem should be minimal, except in local populations.

Think about hamsters; there's a pretty good claim that all pet syrians are descended from a single female.

[lee2211]

Well, 2 years planning seems a good time scale in which you can plan a breeding programe.
There's no need to rush really, if you're going to do it, you want to do it right.

[fabrizio]

On our italian forum we sometimes made a proposal, of creating a sort of "genealogic tree" or "pedigree" for fulicas (or any other CB species), in order to know at first glance actual degrees of "kinship" and choose, if willing to do, some more "far" related speciemens from time to time, to make a sort of outbreeding.

They would be still related to the same, few common ancestors of course, yet several generations succeeding on their own would allow and mantain some random genetic variation, as a little-scope genetic drift, leading the various lines quite afar each others.

-Nevertheless, some "inbreeding" could even lead to intersting results, despite decrease in size; A. fulica that "invaded" several Indian Ocean small islands, no more than a few decades ago, have already "evolved" in distinct populations and in truly different, remarkable new "morphs", some of them quite interesting and astounding, as the so-called "bent noses", whose shell axis is bent.

Anyway, I see from time to time various breeders and online shops, as Bristolinverts, offering some wild A. fulica from some specific localities (Mauritius is one of them, if I remember well).

[Paul]

A long time ago I started work on software to track the family trees of snails. The idea was people would voluntarily enter information and each snail would get an ID, you'd be able to look up the ancestry of your snail. The problem was and is that it's almost impossible for anyone to determine which snail is the "father" and in many case the "mother" also. The system I designed was too exact if you like.

The alternative is to simply record which "pool" of snails they belong to. However, this has its own problems because we'd have to restrict registration to only allow people who have species/cultivars/variants in isolation or had organised specific breeding programmes. Enforcing that would be nigh on impossible.

If DNA mapping were incredibly cheap and easily possible on home computers then we could sort it out.

If someone could think of a viable solution that doesn't negate the value of the idea so that it still has scientific value, I'd write it.

[fabrizio]

Is your program still working (although perhaps "dormant"), Paul?
It would be really interesting... and perhaps, you could still adjust it to make it "looser", as you said it was "too much exact".

Even if we gegin to trace back 1, 2 generations backwards (I'm trying to keep such records, for people I know to exchange fulicas in our forum), it would still be better than nothing.

As for DNA mapping, it could be still possible, not right today but quite soon, as mapping costs are faster and faster decreasing, as it seems... So, even this "futuristic" tool could help us in the task, perhaps sooner than we could imagine!