hybrid issue-roadblock for legalizing arowana

[ausarow]

Hi all, i am working on putting a paper forward to have arowana made legal in australia ( yes this is very possible right now) and one of the things that may stop us now is their concerns that asian arowana could cross with our jars and leis. ie genetic risk.
evidence suggests to me that seeing as the common ancestor was so long ago and they have different appendages and scales etc they would be unlikely to mate together if released and then cohabited the same river.
i am well aware that they can cross within the formosus and they have further identified species now. still that is within the same evolutionary path and not separated by such a long time as is the case with leis and jars.
does anybody have knowledge or proof that farms have tried this type of cross and succeeded or failed. it is also likley if they were to cross the offspring would be infertile, so anything on that would be appreciated too. i am looking for ANYTHING relevent, this could be farms claiming a cross was made, a scientific paper on it. the outcome of this weighs heavily on whether it could be allowed. i will even accept he said she said for the time being to help with where i could look.
thankyou very much in advance.

 

[King-eL]

It's not possible if the aros meet up in the wild. Some farms have tried it but no success. If they did succeed they should be flooding the market by now. Even black aro and silver aros don't cross breed together even they are both South American aros.

Why realease an Asian aro in the wild anyway? If a member from the CITES found an asian aro that is roaming in non-native water they will try and catch that asian aro and check for the microchip that is inplanted in the aro. The person that realeased the aro won't be in trouble as they don't know where he might be but the LFS that sold it or the farm itself will be in question. Once the LFS got taken down of it's CITES licence/cert then they can no longer get Asian arowanas and ban the asian aros in that certain country.

 

[ausarow]

thankyou very much for that information it helps that africans do not cross.
i am pretty confident they would not cross with our fish. does anyone else have any evidence about this or the attempts by farms?

there is a feeling that people may try release some fish into the wild to try harvest the young to make black market money. i doubt anyone would spend the money on this chance. it should not be a government position to ban from legal bussiness because someone may break this law on releasing a fish. as it is now there are already some fish present in the country illegally and this has not been done. i would also appreciate any papers mentioning that arowana are hard to breed and not been bred outside of their native area, even when tried, if someone has links to this. thankyou very much.

 

[pressure_cooker]

asian arowanas are notoriously hard to breed if it can breed outside your its native area then there is no need to import asian arowanas out of asia.

 

[smootheye]

It has previously been proposed to be added to the Australian Import List
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/invitecomment/scleropages-formosus.html
This was rejected
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/lists/import/amend/unsuitable.html
In 2003 French molecular biologist Pouyard and Belgian ichthyologist Teugels describes 3 new species.
http://www.mnhn.fr/sfi/cybium/numeros/french/274/sommaire274.html
S. Augeus is the gold or red-tail golden
S. Legendrei is the red, super red arowana
S. Macrocephalus is the "silver variety" asian Arowana
As the original parent stock were collected from different rivers and assumed to all be Scleropages formosus; the farm bred Dragon Fish available with microchips may already be hybrids?

 

[sodenoshirayuki]

Yes, some/most of the asian aros on market now are hybrids but still are considered as one general species. But as you can see, they are all hybrids made by crossing an asian with another asian. There has yet to be a case where an asian crosses with silvers, jars, leis, etc. Also, even if they were to meet in the wild, just the environment conditions alone would not allow asians to breed with themselves, let alone with other species of aros. Even in controlled situations such as farms, breeding pairs take many years to form even within their own species.

 

[King-eL]

It has previously been proposed to be added to the Australian Import List
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/invitecomment/scleropages-formosus.html
This was rejected
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/lists/import/amend/unsuitable.html
In 2003 French molecular biologist Pouyard and Belgian ichthyologist Teugels describes 3 new species.
http://www.mnhn.fr/sfi/cybium/numeros/french/274/sommaire274.html
S. Augeus is the gold or red-tail golden
S. Legendrei is the red, super red arowana
S. Macrocephalus is the "silver variety" asian Arowana
As the original parent stock were collected from different rivers and assumed to all be Scleropages formosus; the farm bred Dragon Fish available with microchips may already be hybrids?

Most farms and Asian arowana keepers still considered them as single species Scleropages formosus. Even CITES also consider them as a single species. Separating Asain aro species was probably rejected.

 

[pressure_cooker]

asian arowana x asian arowana ( whether RTG/SR, RTG/XB, SR/XB, GREEN/SR, RTG/GREEN ) is possible but, asian x aus, sounds weird and this is not parrot fish were talking about.

 

[ausarow]

thanks guys, keep it coming.
it was rejected in 2007 in oz for reasons of being a large predator and possible conflict with our native saratogas and leis. competition and possible hybridising wrecking the native genetic etc but these days the review process is different and places some weight on trade desires ( economy) and looks right into things as opposed to just saying it "may" escape "may" breed may compete etc. its still going to be hard because i need a lot of information to support them not being able to cross breed and other things. i am seeking scientific papers really, that would be perfect. but this is helping me firm that they dont cross in a natural setting. so keeping me positive.

now yes its agreed that asians are formosus and these were broken up further by molecular genetic marking into other lets say sub species, as mentioned above. that info is in the sticky threads too. thanks.
they have been isolated in different rivers for long enough around asia so to notice differences , the genes altered slightly from one another, but the differences arent enough to stop breeding. it is the case that they are closely related and not as much distance (time) as the relationship between formosus and jardini. i think later on researchers will have a better understanding and could even use genetic markers to identify what will cross etc.. but for now we use what we have..

now jars and leis have different scalation even.
i want you to check this out. this is from the scientitst that is doing the biological reviews now. http://www.affashop.gov.au/PdfFiles/geneticstalk1_ppt.pdf
so i think he understands this stuff well himself, i just need proof that they never have or its very unlikley atleast so that the genetic hybrid risk can be removed form the debate.

i have read somewhere that 140 million years has passed since the common ancestor of formosis and jars and leis.

it may even be that a jar wont cross with a lei? i think i know who to ask for that...

as for who would release them, they are supposed to think about how many release events there are, how much would it cost to cull the wild ones if they did establish.
etc. i think that poaching would take care of it myself. but scientifically large predators that dont have many young are seen to be cheaper to clean out of a river system. as can be seen by them being extinct in their natural origin.

we really really have a good chance.

 

[ausarow]

it is mentioned above that just the environment is enough to ensure asians would not breed within themselves if let wild here let alone with other species but no one has tried and it comes up as a similar climate on their climate mapping program. it actually makes sense to me they may breed up north oz. in the same rivers that holds the jars and maybe leis too. this is something we cant prove either way yet but i think must assume that they could. though we can weigh in all the above. it is not law that we cant import fish that have a simialar climate match but all these things add up to give negative points. too many negative points and your species is banned. the bar is set low, i need to chip away at as many things as i can and then ask they be considered for other controls to be put in place such as a state banning up top north to remove the chances of release there. i feel that the amount of points it accrues should be able to somewhat be offset by the money its worth and the controls they put in place.