Quote Originally Posted by poison beauties View Post
if you think there are that many people over there that would be ok with you producing or working with hybrids you really not in touch with the dart frog hobby or not near as in touch with it as I am. creating hybrids is breaking one of the golden rules as there is much more work going on with darts as far as locale, import and line data than any other frogs you work with. The darts are a beautifull natural representation of whats out there and many want it to stay that way.
For one thing I didn't say there are many people over on dendroboard that wouldn't have an issue with it, I am sure a lot of them would have a fit if they found out someone hybridized something even if it was a species they had no interest in and know little about anyway. What I said was that I only have a few friends over there to begin with and they tend to be reasonable enough people that they aren't going to panic at the mention of a hybrid frog that isn't going to hurt a thing. I think they are capable of looking at issues like this from a practical point of view without allowing emotion to run away with them. I also wasn't talking about hybrid darts. I understand the initial practical reasoning behind not mixing those before all the emotion that is now mixed into the issue arose. The initial main reason for not hybridizing darts is that there is a huge variety of species and morphs with new morphs not infrequently being discovered and coming into the hobby and therefore hybrids could be confusing. That still holds true today.

None of that is a problem though with horned frogs or other species with not nearly as much variety, where only a handful of people breed them, and where hybrids tend to be obvious and or infertile. I also don't see a real problem with hybrids in cases where natural wild hybrids occur with considerable frequency in areas where species ranges overlap, toads within the bufo americanus species group being a excellent and easily observed example of that. In situations like that hybrids are no big deal. All the toads in the americanus group, woodhousii, microscaphus, terrestris, fowleri, hemiophrys, americanus, and houstonensis are capable of producing fertile crosses with other species in that group(see some of the work frank blair of the university of texas did regarding hybridization in toads all the way back back in the 50's-70's) and do so when habitat overlaps in spite of differences in the males calls. The offspring integrate back into the population frequently producing completely natural and obvious hybrid zones with it now being possible to trace gene flow via genetic markers even farther into areas where a species looks "pure" and there is no longer any range overlap. If there is a market for hybrids in those categories for what ever reason then fine, it hurts nothing. It is no more a problem than producing color morphs of a "pure" species. I don't know if you have a problem with that too or not, some in the anti-hybrid-anything crowd do and some don't, but I don't see a problem with either.