Japanese/chinese fire newt cross breeding

Hello all.. pardon me if this has already been discussed or brought up recently. has anyone ever had a japanese fire newt mate w/ a chinese fire newt and produce actual babies? if so , what do you think the colors/ skin texture would look like? thanks for any replies

I would imagine that such a thing is possible, but I doubt that it would be likely to happen. I won't even guess on the morphological characteristics.

I hope that you don't attempt this. I would imagine that quite a few people on this website are against the forming of hybrids as I am. Hybrids may decrease the purity of the genetic stock in the hobby as they may not be easily identified as a cross.

There are a wide variety of newts and salamanders. I'm sure everyone can find an animal that they find aesthetically pleasing. There is no reason for us to develop designer animals. We should be more concerned with attempting to breed new species of animals and keep their genetics more true to nature.

In theory, the classical defininition of a species is a group of animals that cannot interbreed with other species. There are exceptions to this, but JFB and CFB are two distinct species, and I don't believe they are ones that can crossbreed.

Here is an old discussion on the topic:
http://www.caudata.org/forum/messages/13/12880.html

Another point to add is that out of the 300 or so species of salamanders (I think that number sounds right) only a very few are bred with any regularity. Why attempt hybrids (which I personally detest) when there are so many pure species that no one has ever seriously worked with? Just my two cents.
Chip

I'm with Foster on hybrids, they are only something a scientist thats interbreeding them for a good cause (like a cure for a disease, hey you never know). I think that hybridization should not be attempted in salamanders.

I agree with Foster and Ryan.

There are almost as many definitions of what constitutes a species as there are people attempting to define it. It all depends on the perspective from which you are trying to make the classification.
As for the genetic "purity" of species, I kind of disagree with you, Abrahm, but not in your stance against hybridization. Evolution and adaptation requires diversity, without it a population cannot change nor can the individual cope with changes in the environment. The "purer" a species is, the more easily it falls to disease, climate variability, niche disruption, etc.
However, evolution has worked for many millions of years to make these animals better able to meet the challenges of their respective environments. Contrary to popular belief, this has not occurred through just random chance, either. There are very significant 'reasons' to how and why these organisms are the way they are, and anthropomorphic hybridization throws that all right out the window. The way I see it, you are entirely right in that hybridization is of no practical use except to produce "designer pets" to fuel greedy interests. Maybe I'm being slightly arrogant, but when one is in favour of hybridizing, I think they have no respect for the animal in and of itself, of the wonder and culmination of fantastic forces it took to bring the organism into existence, and reduces it all to little more than a status symbol. Way too many people in the herpetocultural trade have gotten into this fad of hybridizing, too quick to ask "can it be done" without ever even contemplating "if it should be done".
I'm against it, especially in the uncontrolled manner that so many hobbyists pursue it. If any one of those hybridized animals ever makes it back into the natural gene pool and it successfully reproduces, it will not only completely disrupt the genetic distinctiveness of that population, but potentially unravel all that evolution has accomplished over the millenia. It is a foolish path to follow, and it would be most responsible to not take the first step down that particular path.

Also, most hybrid animals will be infertile. If they are not, then their offspring will be delicate(F2 fitness) or will eventually become infertile after several generations(hybrid breakdown).

So it is not a good idea.

The idea that different species can not get offspring together or this offspring is infertile is definitely wrong. This is the rule you learn in highschool but it is not working at all in the real world. If you would apply this rule many species would not be real species, especially if you include hybridisation in captivity. in captivity almost all parrots can hybridise and get fertile offspring, does this mean there is only one species of parrot with a lot of subspecies?)

Pure species is something else than a species with little genetic diversity. Pure means it doesn't contain genes that are not in this species in the wild and originate from another species.

Roy, you beat me to the response about hybridization. Kudos.

However on "pureness" we are talking about two separate things. I was referring more to the concept of selective breeding and "purebred" strains, genetic bottlenecking. Yes, you can also refer to the purety of a species in how much of it's DNA is shared with other species. But with science finally accepting the concept of natural horizontal gene flow and that it is much more prevalent than once thought, finding an organism that doesn't have genes that originated from another species is proving to be a more difficult task than one would think.

I believe Joseph was referring only to the known fact that ambystomid hybrids are all unisexual and thus could not sustain the hybrid line. Hybridization of caudates seems to be a dead end from natural experience.

You all have made valid extremely helpful points. thanks very much for replying. They already did spawn a few babies before they've never made it to maturation, always being gobbled up by gambusia. I've had them for a long time and if anyone has a female JFB or wants a female CFB drop me a line. Should I seperate them? I'd feel a little bad, they've lived together for over 6yrs.

Are you absolutely sure they are different species? Male and female JFB look very different from each other. And you are sure some of the eggs hatched? Can you post photos of your newts?

fairly certain. F CFN is smooth and black, M JFN is brown w/ pebbly skin. I found the JFN in w a bunch of CFN's @ a LFS a long way back . I've never seen one since in any LFS around. not even the Berkeley Vivarium. I see CFN's everywhere pretty much all the time. I'm actually relieved I finally found this site. Its pretty dang cool..You guys are helpful AND informative. Thanks!

Interesting, Michael. I hope that you will keep us updated on this, and particularly post photos. I would really like to see the adults, and also the larvae. I would like to try to convince you of 3 things: 1) this is a rare and interesting thing, if you are truly getting cross breeding of these species, and 2) it would be worth separating some of the eggs/larvae if any appear again 3) it is worth the effort to document it with photos. You'd need a good digital camera with a macro function for close-ups - maybe you can borrow one if you don't own one.

That is indeed interesting if they did in fact breed, although my stance on hybrids remains unchanged. Regarding my earlier use of the term "pure" - I should have used "recognized" species instead. Interesting thread.
Chip

Something that should be noted is that hybrids can and do appear in nature "naturally". For example, the two blue spotted/jeffersons hybrid ambystomas, occur were the two species breed in the same water body. They are known as the silvery or tremblays depending on the father species. they happen to be all female and have a third set of chromosomes. However they can still breed with either species and lay eggs but the offspring will still all be female.
Perhaps a better example would be that of red wolves. We have them in Ontario mainly in Algonquin park. They are their own species, but recent DNA analysis shows that they are an identical match to grey wolf/coyote hybrids. They can breed with either, but prefer other red wolves.

sorry to butt in, but, i am glad you changed your working to "recognized" rather than using "pure", like some crazy salamander eugenics was into play. But, yes, I understand what you were going for.
People still need to get a grasp on what hybrids are and their effect on evolution. Hybridization is just another phenomenon of nature. Not all hybrids are created by evil humans trying to make a dollar. Not all hybrids are mules.
Besides axolotl, are there other creatures in the trade composed of mixed species in the ancestry?
michael this is very intersting. I am a bit sceptical, but if this was an occurance I am curious to the event.

finally took some pics of the 2 newts.







(Message edited by TJ on April 29, 2007)

It looks like your ID's are correct. I'd suggest raising any larvae you get from this pair to document the occurrence(but please don't spread them around). Wonder if anybody out there would be interested in having larvae/metamorphs/however far they can make it in alcohol?