Lightning Clownfish News

[mpedersen]

Once you take a wild lineage and begin to increase the frequency of a trait that is otherwise rare in a species

Do we stop to ask why it's rare in the species?

(I would argue) is technically engineering.

Is the occurrence of an "albino" fish and the preservation of that trait "engineering" an "albino"?

I believe it's actually selective breeding...only arguing the semantics because there is pre-existing terminology and the use of engineering to describe selective breeding will confuse people more towards the more widely held definitions of "genetic engineer" which are not selective breeding.

While there ARE those "designer" phenotypes in the wild, the offspring are engineered to exactly resemble the parents' desired phenotypic quality under controlled breeding settings, as truly random mating would not produce the same results.

Um....possibly not true? Afterall, IF the Lightning trait is partially dominant, then ANY PNG fish I mated it with would have produced more Lightning offspring - 50% in fact. If we do nothing, and randomly pair two fish to create a handful of second generation offspring, how many of those pairs are going to be Wild/Wild, Wild/Lightning, and Lightning/Lightning? Not too surprisingly, it would be 25%, 50%, and 25%. If one of four randomly paired pairs is a lightning X lightning pairing, and that's going to produce something totally different (in theory) in the F2 generation.

Now, of course, this is only dealing with the F1 generation being all siblings, but if the Lightning trait is partially dominant, then any of those F1 Lightning offspring can be mated to unrelated PNG White Stripe Maroons and still produce more Lightnings. And while we have only been shown TWO wild caught lightnings to date, we in fact do have it on rumor that there are more out there. And we only need to look to another partially dominant trait, Picasso, to know that in fact, that IS possible for a partially dominant trait to persist in the wild at some baseline low level. You could argue (as I do) that Picasso is a naturally occurring mutation within the Picasso species, not unlike seeing the occasional melanistic squirrel in your own neighborhood. This revelation has caused me to dramatically change my point of view on some aspects of designer breeding, because it screams "natural genetic diversity" in the same way that the polymorphic form of Amphiprion melanopus from the Coral Sea (where many lack headstripes) is valuable and natural. Or any of the african cichlids who persist in polymorphic states as well...we don't consider the breeding of these forms in captivity to be "egineering", although we do find examples where selective breeding can strip away the common presumed "default" wild type forms in captive settings, but so long as we understand the genetics and do not breed ourselves into a genetic dead end (basically meaning as long as we keep the default wild type around) we should be able to get back there if we needed to.

So what we've done, as breeders, is simply removed one of the reasons that we perhaps don't see MORE Lightnings in the wild - "natural selection" in terms of predation pressures among other things. My Lightning Maroon grew up in the wild, and arguably could have started spawning in the wild with a regularly striped fish and potentially produced 50% lightning offspring. It may well have been born from such parents. So why aren't there more lightnings out there? I would guess that it's probably for the same reason that we don't see too many naturally occurring albino animals and fish. Albinism is pretty well understood, to the point that I've heard numbers that every 200,000 or so fish produce will yield one albino. Clearly this common mutation occurs in nature, but we don't see it very often first because it is a recessive trait (I *suspect* Lightning is not recessive), but second because an all white fish sticks out like a sore thumb to a predator.

Ultimately, the only thing I'm doing in my breeding of the Lightning Maroon at this point IS yes, increasing the frequency of the trait by simply producing the fish. The only selection I've even done so far is to simply use the fish for breeding, and to pair it with a randomly selected, outwardly normal white stripe maroon, from the same geographic area (which is what would happen in nature). I certainly have not engineered anything, I've only not culled or "thinned the heard" of the fish with the phenotype (which we assume could be the explanation for why there aren't more out there in the wild...solid white clownfish might make an easier target).

[mpedersen]

P.S. Sorry, the teacher in me has to jump in. I teach music, but I can totally see a module based on the Lightning Maroon breeding program being taught in Environmental Science and Marine Science high school classes. Crossing genetics with environmental components and applying to real life situations is a great classroom model and would really engage kids. Have you ever thought about creating something that teachers can use? I bet you could get funding to create something like that. It would be great publicity for your project, too.

My wife is a teacher Tell me more...

[+etannert]

I don't know for sure what I'm envisioning. I'm thinking a National Science Foundation or something like that. We have great, think-out-of-the-box type teachers here at my school; I'll get with some people who know more than I do and see if I can give you some direction or make some connections.

[Robb in Austin]

Great insight Matt, and welcome to the club.

In retrospect, my use of the term engineered did not reflect what I meant and Bio used a more appropriate term. Sorry for any negative connotations it may have brought up.

Regardless, I think captive breeding is a good thing.