Any ex FH keepers wanna input?

[Chrisplosion]

My GOD! That flowerhorn its awesome

I would love to have it but its $1.8K

http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/auction.cgi?fwflowerhorn&1294713619

 

[xboroinc]

i have to agree with at7447 even tho i still keep them to this day tho...one day i might have to give them up.

 

[VRWC]

You would rather keep cat feces than a cichlid hybrid? I think you need to get your priorities straight, man.

no no...not rather than a hybrid. rather than THAT hybrid.

Id love to have one of these Festae / Manguense hybrids:

 

[ibz_rg]

Flowerhorns are not cichlids. They are hybrids.

Some people are very against them. I don't really care if people keep them or not. To each there own. They can not be considered cichlids though.

You reach this hybrid by crossing cichlids. Therefore they are a cichlid hybrid.

 

[the animal guy]

Flowerhorns are not cichlids. They are hybrids.

Some people are very against them. I don't really care if people keep them or not. To each there own. They can not be considered cichlids though.

that has got to be the dumbest thing that came out of you.

So if a person is mixed with a lot of race, they are not human?

 

[jgentry]

that has got to be the dumbest thing that came out of you.

So if a person is mixed with a lot of race, they are not human?

You can call people dumb and laugh all you want but a hybrid is not a cichlid. Please tell me the scientific name of your flowerhorn and it's classification. Blood parrots have been around forever, what is there scientific name and classification? Please give a uniform discription of what flowerhorns look like for classification?

All humans are homo sapiens. Any two breeding homo sapiens produces a homo sapiens. An example is an Cryptoheros sajica crossed with an cryptoheros mrynae. What exactly would that result in. It would be the equivelant of you mating with a neanderthalensis. Or better yet why not cross genus like most flowerhorns are. That would be the equilivent of you mating with a gorilla. Sound the same as several human races mating?

 

[Aquamojo]

When two cichlids breed the end result is a mixed breed cichlid. Using this logic naturally occurring hybrids would also not be considered Cchlids. Until of course they are "discovered" and c.laimed as a new species. The fact that they don't have a specific scientific name has no bearing on their species.

Calling someone "dumb" for making a comment and giving input to a question asked is juvenile and really unnecessary.

 

[jgentry]

When two cichlids breed the end result is a mixed breed cichlid. Using this logic naturally occurring hybrids would also not be considered Cchlids. Until of course they are "discovered" and c.laimed as a new species. The fact that they don't have a specific scientific name has no bearing on their species.

This is a valid point Mo. But you are talking about crossing of wild populations that results in a new fish that has a sustainable population with consistant characteristics. Flowerhorns are often fish that cannot be recreated by 2 of the same fish breeding so I guess I just look at them a little differently. Maybe my perception is not accurate.

Like I've said many times. Keep what you like and take good care of them. That's what really matters.

 

[the animal guy]

I didnt call anyone dumb.

Sorry about that. I really meant it in a friendly way only. Like saying to my friend "that's stupid foo"..

Dont take it the wrong way coming from me...

 

[Juxtaroberto]

I hope more people would respect the definition of the term "species" before starting to argue over it. If two individuals can produced viable F1s, AND the F1s are fertile, these two individuals are the same species. PERIOD. This is the definition. It doesn't matter what each of us thinks. Don't like it? Don't use it.

The implication of this definition is that there is no gene flow between species (not considering horizontal gene transfer events here). Donkeys and horses can mate and produce mules, but mules are sterile. Dead end. No gene flow. In other words, each species is reproductively isolated from another.

Species isn't very well defined in biology, and even the definition you use has exceptions. Some female mules can be fertile... so are horses and donkeys now the same species? No.

2.0 Species Definitions

A discussion of speciation requires a definition of what constitutes a species. This is a topic of considerable debate within the biological community. Three recent reviews in the Journal of Phycology give some idea of the scope of the debate (Castenholz 1992, Manhart and McCourt 1992, Wood and Leatham 1992). There are a variety of different species concept currently in use by biologists. These include folk, biological, morphological, genetic, paleontological, evolutionary, phylogenetic and biosystematic definitions. In the interest of brevity, I'll only discuss four of these -- folk, biological, morphological and phylogenetic. A good review of species definitions is given in Stuessy 1990.
2.1 The Folk Concept of Species

Naturalists around the world have found that the individual plants and animals they see can be mentally grouped into a number of taxa, in which the individuals are basically alike. In societies that are close to nature, each taxon is given a name. These sorts of folk taxonomies have two features in common. One aspect is the idea of reproductive compatability and continuity within a species. Dogs beget dogs, they never beget cats! This has a firm grounding in folk knowledge. The second notion is that there is a discontinuity of variation between species. In other words, you can tell species apart by looking at them (Cronquist 1988).
2.2 The Biological Species Concept

Over the last few decades the theoretically preeminent species definition has been the biological species concept (BSC). This concept defines a species as a reproductive community.
2.2.1 History of the Biological Species Concept

The BSC has undergone a number of changes over the years. The earliest precursor that I could find was in Du Rietz 1930. Du Rietz defined a species as

"... the smallest natural populations permanently separated from each other by a distinct discontinuity in the series of biotypes."
​

Barriers to interbreeding are implicit in this definition and explicit in Du Rietz's dicussion of it. A few years later, Dobzhansky defined a species as

"... that stage of evolutionary progress at which the once actually or potentially interbreeding array of forms becomes segregated into two or more separate arrays which are physiologically incapable of interbreeding." (Dobzhansky 1937)
​

It is important to note that this is a highly restrictive definition of species. It emphasizes experimental approaches and ignores what goes on in nature. By the publication of the third edition of the book this appeared in, Dobzhansky (1951) had relaxed this definition to the point that is substantially agreed with Mayr's.
The definition of a species that is accepted as the BSC was promulgated by Mayr (1942). He defined species as

"... groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups."
​

Note that the emphasis in this definition is on what happens in nature. Mayr later amended this definition to include an ecological component. In this form of the definition a species is

"... a reproductive community of populations (reproductively isolated from others) that occupies a specific niche in nature."
​

The BSC is most strongly accepted among vertebrate zoologists and entomologists. Two facts account for this. First, these are the groups that the authors of the BSC worked with . (Note: Mayr is an ornithologist and Dobzhansky worked extensively with Drosophila). More importantly, obligate sexuality is the predominant form of reproduction in these groups. It is not coincidental that the BSC is less widely accepted among botanists. Terrestrial plants exhibit much greater diversity in their "mode of reproduction" than do vertebrates and insects.
2.2.2 Criticisms of the Biological Species Concept

There has been considerable criticism of the theoretical validity and practical utility of the BSC. (Cracraft 1989, Donoghue 1985, Levin 1979, Mishler and Donoghue 1985, Sokal and Crovello 1970).
The application of the BSC to a number of groups, including land plants, is problematical because of interspecific hybridization between clearly delimited species (McCourt and Hoshaw 1990, Mishler 1985).
There is an abundance of asexual populations that this definition just doesn't apply to (Budd and Mishler 1990). Examples of taxa which are obligately asexual include bdelloid rotifers, euglenoid flagellates, some members of the Oocystaceae (coccoid green algae), chloromonad flagellates and some araphid pennate diatoms. Asexual forms of normally sexual organisms are known. Obligately asexual populations of Daphnia are found in some arctic lakes. The BSD can be of no help in delimiting species in these groups. A similar situation is found in the prokaryotes. Though genes can be exchanged among bacteria by a number of mechanisms, sexuality, as defined in eukaryotes, in unknown in the prokaryotes. One popular microbiology text doesn't even mention the BSC (Brock and Madigan 1988).
The applicability of the BSC is also questionable in those land plants that primarily self-pollinate (Cronquist 1988).
A more serious criticism is that the BSC is inapplicable in practice. This charge asserts that, in most cases, the BSC cannot be practically applied to delimit species. The BSC suggests breeding experiments as the test of species membership. But this is a test that is rarely made. The number of crosses needed to delimit membership in a species can be astronomical. The following example will illustrate the problem.
Here in Wisconsin we have about 16,000 lakes and ponds. A common (and tasty ;-)) inhabitant of many of these bodies of water is the bluegill sunfish. Let's ask a question -- do all these bluegill populations constitute one species or several morphologically similar species? Assume that only 1,000 of these lakes and ponds contain bluegills. Assuming that each lake constitutes a population, an investigator would have to perform 499,500 separate crosses to determine whether the populations could interbreed. But to do this right we should really do reciprocal crosses (i.e. cross a male from population A with a female from population B and a male from population B with a female from population A). This brings the total crosses we need to make up to 999,000. But don't we also need to make replicates? Having three replicates brings the total to 2,997,000 crosses. In addition, you just can't put a pair of bluegills into a bucket and expect them to mate. In nature, male bluegills excavate and defend nests in large mating colonies. After the nests are excavated the females come in to the colony to spawn. Here the females choose among potential mates. This means that we would need to simulate a colony in our test. Assume that 20 fish would be sufficient for a single test. We find that we would need about 60,000,000 fish to test whether all these populations are members of the same species! (We would also need a large number of large aquaria to run these crosses in). But bluegills are not restricted to Wisconsin...
I could go on, but I think the point is now obvious. The fact of the matter is that the time, effort and money needed to delimit species using the BSC is, to say the least, prohibitive.
Another reason why using the BSC to delimit species is impractical is that breeding experiments can often be inconclusive. Interbreeding in nature can be heavily influenced by variable and unstable environmental factors. (Any angler who has waited for the bluegills to get on to the beds can confirm this one). If we can't duplicate natural conditions of breeding, a failure to breed doesn't mean that the critters can't (or don't) interbreed in the wild. The difficulties that were encountered in breeding pandas in captivity illustrate this. In addition, experimentally showing that A doesn't interbreed with B doesn't preclude both interbreeding with C. This gets even more complicated in groups that don't have nice, straightforward sexes. An example of this occurs in a number of protozoan species. These critters have numerous mating types. There can be very complicated compatability of mating types. Finally, breeding experiments can be inconclusive because actual interbreeding and gene flow among phenetically similar, genetically compatible local populations is often more restricted than the BSC would suggest (Cronquist 1988).
In practice, even strong adherents of the BSC use phenetic similarities and discontinuities for delimiting species. If the organisms are phenotypically similar, they are considered conspecific until a reproductive barrier is demonstrated.
Another criticism of the BSC comes from the cladistic school of taxonomy (e.g. Donoghue 1985). The cladists argue that sexual compatibility is a primitive trait. Organisms that are no longer closely related may have retained the ability for genetic recombination with each other through sex. This is not a derived characteristic. Because of this it is invalid for defining monophyletic taxa.
A final problem with the BSC is that groups that do not occur together in time cannot be evaluated. We simply cannot know whether two such groups would interbreed freely if they came together under natural conditions. This makes it impossible to delimit the boundaries of extinct groups using the BSC. One question will illustrate the problem. Do Homo erectus and Homo sapiens represent the same or different species? This question is unresolvable using the biological definition.
Several alternatives to the biological species concept have been suggested. I will discuss two.
2.3 The Phenetic (or Morphological) Species Concept

Cronquist (1988) proposed an alternative to the BSC that he called a "renewed practical species definition". He defines species as

"... the smallest groups that are consistently and persistently distinct and distinguishable by ordinary means."
​

Three comments must be made about this definition. First, "ordinary means" includes any techniques that are widely available, cheap and relatively easy to apply. These means will differ among different groups of organisms. For example, to a botanist working with angiosperms ordinary means might mean a hand lens; to an entomologist working with beetles it might mean a dissecting microscope; to a phycologist working with diatoms it might mean a scanning electron microscope. What means are ordinary are determined by what is needed to examine the organisms in question.
Second, the requirement that species be persistently distinct implies a certain degree of reproductive continuity. This is because phenetic discontinuity between groups cannot persist in the absence of a barrier to interbreeding.
Third, this definition places a heavy, though not exclusive, emphasis on morphological characters. It also recognizes phenetic characters such as chromosome number, chromosome morphology, cell ultrastructure, secondary metabolites, habitats and other features.
2.4 Phylogenetic Species Concepts

There are several phylogenetic species definitions. All of them assert that classifications should reflect the best supported hypotheses of the phylogeny of the organisms. Baum (1992) describes two types of phylogenetic species concepts.

1. A species is the smallest cluster of organisms that possesses at least one diagnostic character. This character may be morphological, biochemical or molecular and must be fixed in reproductively cohesive units. It is important to realize that this reproductive continuity is not used in the same way as in the BSC. Phylogenetic species may be reproductive communities. Reproductively compatible individuals need not have the diagnostic character of a species. In this case, the individuals need not be conspecific.
2. A species must be monophyletic and share one or more derived character. There are two meanings to monophyletic (de Queiroz and Donoghue 1988, Nelson 1989). The first defines a monophyletic group as all the descendants of a common ancestor and the ancestor. The second defines a monophyletic group as a group of organisms that are more closely related to each other than to any other organisms. These distinctions are discussed in Baum 1992 and de Queiroz and Donoghue 1990.

A recently offered hypothesis suggests that phylogenetic species concepts and the biological species concept may be highly, if not completely, incompatible. "Parallel speciation " has been defined as the repeated independent evolution of the same reproductive isolating mechanism (Schluter and Nagel 1995). An example of this may occur when a species colonizes several new areas which are isolated from, but environmentally similar to, each other. Similar selective pressures in these environments result in parallel evolution among the traits that confer reproductive isolation. There is some experimental evidence that this might occur (Kilias, et al. 1980; Dodd 1989). The implication of this is that biological species (as defined by the BSC) may often be polyphyletic. If this occurs in nature, it could undermine the usefulness of phylogenetic species concepts.
2.5 Why This is Included

What is all of this doing in a discussion of observed instances of speciation? What a biologist will consider as a speciation event is, in part, dependent on which species definition that biologist accepts. The biological species concept has been very successful as a theoretical model for explaining species differences among vertebrates and some groups of arthropods. This can lead us to glibly assert its universal applicability, despite its irrelevance to many groups. When we examine putative speciation events, we need to ask the question, which species definition is the most reasonable for this group of organisms? In many cases it will be the biological definition. In many other cases some other definition will be more appropriate.