aro question

[crisper]

Silver arowana (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum) and Black arowana (Osteoglossum ferrerai) can be crossbred easily. It's pretty common here at my place.

So if silvers and blacks can be crossbred are the incedence of DE lower in these crossbreeds? Is there notable difference. I was just wondering if it would be possible to reduce DE in captive bred silvers in this way. Condidering the fact that DE is not all that common in blacks.

 

[David R]

Here's another way of vewing this issue: The breeding of a horse and a donkey produces a Mule, a Hybrid. The breeding of an Arabian and a Quarter horse produces aa Arab/quarter Cross.

Breeding an Asian and a S. American Aro (if possible) would produce a Mule. Breeding an Asian and an Asian produces an Asian Arowana of a different color variant.

You can call them what you like, but in reality they are both hybrids, just at different levels. Doesn't matter if its intra-specific or intergeneric, its still a hybrid. Even a cross of two different variants of the same species (eg crossing a red and green aro before the S. formosus complex was split) is still a hybrid. Cross is just like a slang word for hybrid, there isn't really a difference.

So if silvers and blacks can be crossbred are the incedence of DE lower in these crossbreeds? Is there notable difference. I was just wondering if it would be possible to reduce DE in captive bred silvers in this way. Condidering the fact that DE is not all that common in blacks.

If you cross a silver and a black you no longer have a silver arowana. It may be possible to breed one of the hybrids bacl to a true silver (presumably with no DE), then cross the most silver-looking of their offspring back to another true silver, etc etc, for several generations. They do this with angora goats to introduce new bloodlines, and IIRS they can only sell the wool as angora after 6 generations of crossing the hybrid young back to a true angora.
Maybe you could do the same with silvers, but it seems like a pretty pointless exercise really, if you want a south american aro with no drop eye why wouldn't you just buy a black? Its not like they're hard to find or expensive in the US....

 

[Kamisan]

Kamisan, you are on the right track, but not quite correct. have a read of this; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)

[I replaced Wiki's examples with more relevant fish examples] Quote;
In biology, hybrid has two meanings.[1] The first meaning is the result of interbreeding between two animals or plants of different taxa. Hybrids between different subspecies within a species (eg Polypterus endlicheri endlicheri X P. e. congicus) are known as intra-specific hybrids. Hybrids between different species within the same genus (eg. Scleropages formosus X S. aureus) are sometimes known as interspecific hybrids. Hybrids between different genera (eg. Amatitlania nigrofasciata (convict) X Rocio octofasciata (Jack Dempsey)) are sometimes known as intergeneric hybrids.

So any cross of two fish from different taxa is a hybrid.

BTW I realise Wiki isn't the bible on all known things, but it does contain a lot of useful information about taxonomy. I'm not too sure how up-to-date their Latin names are, but I haven't yet seen a reason to believe they aren't valid.

Hi David

I had visited the link and already taken some points into consideration. By all means, please correct me if I'm wrong.

It's very clearly that both of us using different version of Scleropages formosus classification as reference. For your infomation, I'm still taking the original version of Scleropages formosus (Schlegel & Müller, 1844) as the reference in this Hybrid vs Crossbreed issues, thus it suggest me that there will be no hybrid for Asian arowana.

For me, with all the disputes in the latest Scleropages formosus classification, I would rather not to take it into this discussion.

 

[Kamisan]

So if silvers and blacks can be crossbred are the incedence of DE lower in these crossbreeds? Is there notable difference. I was just wondering if it would be possible to reduce DE in captive bred silvers in this way. Condidering the fact that DE is not all that common in blacks.

No significant improvement in the DE issue. Furthermore, this 1st generation of Silver X Black crossbreed was geneticly unstable. I still can see at least 3 different varients within the same brood of fries. Some having Silver arowana feature, some with Black feature and there are few pieces comes in between.

 

[David R]

It's very clearly that both of us using different version of Scleropages formosus classification as reference. For your infomation, I'm still taking the original version of Scleropages formosus (Schlegel & Müller, 1844) as the reference in this Hybrid vs Crossbreed issues, thus it suggest me that there will be no hybrid for Asian arowana.

The word hybrid can be used to describe crosses between different levels; subspecies (intra-specific hybrid), species (interspecific hybrid), genus (intergeneric hybrid) etc.
According to wiki, "A crossbreed or crossbred usually refers to an animal with purebred parents of two different breeds, varieties, or populations." and "A hybrid animal is one with parentage of two separate species, differentiating it from crossbred animals, which have parentage of the same species.". It seems a bit contradictory, but to me it says that a crossbreed is 'slang' for an intra-specific hybrid, and a 'hybrid animal' is slang for an interspecific (or intergeneric) hybrid. When they talk about crossbreeds being different from 'hybrids' they aren't referring to the true meaning of the word hybrid, which can cover crosses at all levels.

I too will stay away from the disputes about the classification of the Scleropages genus, as I'm not really well enough informed to make any useful contributions. New Zealand only has S. formosus and S. jardini on the list of allowed imports, so I'll be happy to consider them all S. formosus.

ps. would love to see pics of the Osteoglossum hybrids, I've never heard of it being done before!

 

[Kamisan]

The word hybrid can be used to describe crosses between different levels; subspecies (intra-specific hybrid), species (interspecific hybrid), genus (intergeneric hybrid) etc.
According to wiki, "A crossbreed or crossbred usually refers to an animal with purebred parents of two different breeds, varieties, or populations." and "A hybrid animal is one with parentage of two separate species, differentiating it from crossbred animals, which have parentage of the same species.". It seems a bit contradictory, but to me it says that a crossbreed is 'slang' for an intra-specific hybrid, and a 'hybrid animal' is slang for an interspecific (or intergeneric) hybrid. When they talk about crossbreeds being different from 'hybrids' they aren't referring to the true meaning of the word hybrid, which can cover crosses at all levels.

I too will stay away from the disputes about the classification of the Scleropages genus, as I'm not really well enough informed to make any useful contributions. New Zealand only has S. formosus and S. jardini on the list of allowed imports, so I'll be happy to consider them all S. formosus.

ps. would love to see pics of the Osteoglossum hybrids, I've never heard of it being done before!

It's okay David, just from a different school of thoughts.

About the picture, for sure will share here whenever I came across such speciments again in this near future.