Inbreeding among roaches, caterpillars, beetles, etc.

[Cap10Squirty]

It has been a while since I've posted here since I've been so busy with my last year of pharmacy school. I was thinking about this the other day and it concerned me somewhat - will inbreeding throughout several generations of hissers, dubias, hornworms, silkworms, superworms, and basically any other invertebrate feeder, have as a profound effect on the future generation's well being as it does with mammals,amphibians, etc? I've had the same stock of dubia and hisser roach for over a year and they appear to be doing perfectly fine....but it just made me wonder about it all. I couldn't find data on really any of these species so I thought I'd ask the pros here who have MUCH more experience raising these creatures.

If any of these invertebrates are more susceptible to defects/poor health and this has been observed personally, I'd like to hear about it (I suspect the caterpillars, but then again...silkworms have been inbred so much over thousands of years that they lost their ability to fly....so it might not be an issue on a much smaller scale/time frame?)

- Garrett

[MatthewM1]

Its my understanding that if you start your colonies with very few individuals that in about 5 years you will start to see a drop off in production and eventually they will just not produce. I've actually been planning on finding some other hobbyists with colonies and swapping roaches to vary genetics, better safe than sorry, especially with how cheaply roaches can be shipped.

[Cap10Squirty]

Its my understanding that if you start your colonies with very few individuals that in about 5 years you will start to see a drop off in production and eventually they will just not produce.

That would be a very manageable time frame to introduce new stock once or twice, and even if it were only a few...say you have a 5 year old roach bin with 1000 roaches (just for illustration) and you purchased 20 adult roaches from someone else. Take 20 from the old bin and pair them with the new stock and let that colony grow while proportionately feeding off the old stock. Probably the easiest thing to do for caterpillars would be to just order new eggs after a season of several breeding cycles.