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Post by africaone on Jan 30, 2011 10:57:23 GMT -8
has it already been bred ?
Thierry
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Post by enyas24 on Jan 30, 2011 12:33:47 GMT -8
It was bred for scientific research, in order to find the mendel rules behind the gene transmission but the last larvae were killed by a disease around 1985.
The specimens that you see were off springs from the original wild caught adults .They are thought to be extinct both in nature and in captivity
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Post by enyas24 on Jan 30, 2011 12:35:43 GMT -8
Radovan,
Yes they are in my collection and it can be described as an aberration but true zorro are from a gene mutation. that's the most correct way to classify them
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Post by nusferatus369 on Jan 30, 2011 15:03:33 GMT -8
Nice firt time i see The Zorro gene.
i heard about that gene but never see before today
Thanks to chair the picture
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Post by Chris Grinter on Jan 30, 2011 18:54:38 GMT -8
I think it's a bit misleading to call the butterfly "extinct". Just because you breed or find an aberration and it disappears - does not make it extinct. Re-breeding would resurrect this gene, which still exists in unexpressed forms in the wild populations. Extinction implies that a species or population is gone forever and can never be recreated via breeding or manipulation. I wouldn't go so far in this instance.
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Post by enyas24 on Jan 31, 2011 3:16:06 GMT -8
Dear Chris, I would like to correct you but as i never want to be absolute i will leave a slim possibility.The gene of zorro is not recessive as i have said , it s dominant. That means that if the population has it, it will be expressed and it cannot be "hidden".This was proven with zorroxnormal crossing were the 50% of the offsprings were having the characteristic. The F2 generations still had it but in a more fainted form. These experiments used maybe hundreds of specimens and not a small number I don't say that all the wild population is researched but in the locality of this mutation almost 25 years of french academic research and field sampling returned the result of no observations. So it's believed to be extinct . These are not my claims but findings of the people that first observed and researched it. From 1988 or around that date and after no zorro butterfly was found nowhere In the URL you can see the paper: lepidopteraresearchfoundation.org/journals/26/PDF26/26-161.pdfps: One of the persons that found the mutation and studied apollo in general for more than 40 years, Jean Pierre Vesco told me that s it s most likely extinct so i believe him,i dont claim it by myself .The best would be for this wonderful aberration to occur sometime again.  |
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Post by enyas24 on Jan 31, 2011 11:30:49 GMT -8
Dear Radovan, You are right! I don't know how difficult is in general when you just rear them. I meant with lab conditions to sustain one population with inbreeding, crowded larvae and keep one characteristic one disease can be a catastrophe and that's what happened i think (as i was told) I have to admit that i have never reared them and i don't know a lot about the procedure so forgive me sometimes  Thank you for the breeding info though! Tassos |
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