N.strauchii larval deformity

[Mark]

Has anyone else seen this deformity before? The tail grows at right angles to the body. I've raised thousands of larvae of various species over the years and only ever seen this twice, both times in N.strauchii.

 

[Jennewt]

I've definitely seen mutants like this among N. strauchii. I've attributed it to inbreeding.

The other type of mutant I've commonly seen in N. strauchii are embryos that develop big and round. These don't survive to hatching.

 

[Molch]

Last year I had a marmoratus larva (below as a developing egg) that was bent at right angles in the neck region. It never straightened out after hatching and remained pretzeled up like that until I euthed it at about 3 weeks old.

whether this is due to inbreeding - who knows? I'm guessing it could just as easily be a dvelopmental defect that just occurs in a small percent of larvae?

 

[Azhael]

I had something very similar, although not quite a right angle, happen in H.orientalis larvae. It was a time, many years ago, when i tried rearing a larger number but kept the eggs and the larvae too cool. I also had spinners that time.
I haven´t seen it again, but truth be told it could be happening frequently and i´d never know.
It´s not easy to predict the cause. If it were the result of inbreeding causing homozygosis for a rare allele, it should appear consistently. If it doesn´t, then it might be the product of a random deletion, or other mutations, or something else entirely.
Given the amount of offspring they can produce i don´t think a few malformed embryos are necessarily a reason for concern. What would be weird would be to not see any, ever.

That reminds me i recently sent Caleb the first ever pair of twins (pyrrhos) i had ever personally seen. Embryonic abnormalities are sometimes very unfortunate events, but they are always interesting (if you are an evil nerd).

Awesome picture, by the way, althouh i´m sorry for the little guy.

 

[Mark]

The other type of mutant I've commonly seen in N. strauchii are embryos that develop big and round. These don't survive to hatching.

Yep, had those big round guys too. They "deflated" during development and became regular thin larva. Some have hatched as preemies so I shall keep them separate and assume the worst.

My strauchii are the same line as Jen's so it's not too surprising we're seeing similar mutants. I wonder if unrelated strauchii groups produce the same mutations? Perhaps it's something common to the species? Whilst one expects a small assortment of mutants in a large batch of eggs the bent tail and bloaters appears to be oddly consistent to this particular line of newts.