Arion Ater or Arion Rufus, the "European" Slug selective breeding.

[davo]

Partula snails are very cool, actualy I find amazing no one has ever though of introducing them into the private sector, they are so endangered in the wild and their dietary needs are so especific (and so very unlikely to become invasive). If they were bred as pets they would hardly become extinct, rater they would trive and make interesting educational pets.

They do very well in captivity too. Where do you work snakeguy? Far as I know there are 15ish zoos in the International Partula Conservation Programme, I know theres at least 4 over here in the UK. What species you working with?

 

[Guffmeister]

I don't know much about selective breeding, but surely if you keep a closed community of woodlice, and keep them so that they are breeding with themselves long enough, you start to combine recessive genes that would not meet much in nature and get some weird colours and genetic throwbacks. You don't necessarily have to start with a weird colour or shape do you? I remember watching a program about pigeon breeding and they said how you can completely change the colours of the feathers from a simple grey to brights reds and greens in just 10 or 20 generations of careful breeding (and in-breeding)

But then, woodlice and slugs and the like do tend to hang around their own kind quite a lot. They're probably completely inbred already.

@coura: What kind's of colous and morphs do you have? Did you find them naturally or breed them?

 

[coura]

I don't know much about selective breeding, but surely if you keep a closed community of woodlice, and keep them so that they are breeding with themselves long enough, you start to combine recessive genes that would not meet much in nature and get some weird colours and genetic throwbacks. You don't necessarily have to start with a weird colour or shape do you? I remember watching a program about pigeon breeding and they said how you can completely change the colours of the feathers from a simple grey to brights reds and greens in just 10 or 20 generations of careful breeding (and in-breeding)

But then, woodlice and slugs and the like do tend to hang around their own kind quite a lot. They're probably completely inbred already.

@coura: What kind's of colous and morphs do you have? Did you find them naturally or breed them?

The morphs I have are natural but not very comon, I dont want to talk about it much yet because I dont know if Im going to sucssed in making strong colonies of all kinds, it would be big bummer if for some reason they failled. As for colors I have, and I know Im going to regret this because next thing you guys are going to ask me for pics and I have a bad historial with pic posting but what a heck, albinistic ones (creamy white to yellowish white), redish orange ones and a phase that I call the bumble bee, these are yellowish or whiteish with darker stripes. Kind of cool bugs

 

[Guffmeister]

Wow! Great! I won't ask you for pics if you don't want to take any, but of course it'd be good to see them!

I see you live in Europe! Where? It might be interesting to set up a kind of woodlouse exchange, where we can trade woodlice of certain colour or whatever that we're not looking for. Just a thought...

 

[coura]

Wow! Great! I won't ask you for pics if you don't want to take any, but of course it'd be good to see them!

I see you live in Europe! Where? It might be interesting to set up a kind of woodlouse exchange, where we can trade woodlice of certain colour or whatever that we're not looking for. Just a thought...

I live in Portugal men, I dont mind posting pics, the thing is that when ever I want to do it something goes wrong, the only time I was sucessfull at it was my first time. The last time I tryed it...lets not go that way

 

[knifegill]

The last time I tryed it...lets not go that way

We all goof sometimes. What's important is figuring out what went wrong and avoiding that problem in the future.

 

[logo]

You are really making me want to go out an go catch some snails and slugs now.

 

[knifegill]

You are really making me want to go out an go catch some snails and slugs now.

Be careful. I have trouble driving lately because I'm constantly checking curbs for reddish slugs. It's way more hazardous than fishkeeping because all you need to collect is a small plastic container. I've had to put back most of what I've collected, but still have the orange pair, the Sideband and the Blue snails in my albums.

 

[knifegill]

Update: The orange slimeballs are eating carrots and oranges, as well as greens. They POOP. I mean all over the place. As in 'this is a pain in the butt' and I am already getting sick of turd duty.

 

[knifegill]

Well, two years later. My slugs lived well, but NEVER REPRODUCED. After several months, in dejection, I canned the whole project. But this time, I'm going bigger. I'm giving them a larger tank, more food, and will be more patient. I know where to find more orange slugs, so that part is easy. It's just the breeding, it never happened and I need to figure out why.