Female Endlers?

[Annastasia]

(Please, i am waiting patiently for somebody to prove me wrong! I posted this thread to learn that I am wrong! TFF is a place for learning, after all. Its a bit of a test really )

How exactly do you want to be proven wrong? I think a lot of people are putting up good arguements that there ARE female Endlers, yet you seem to want something more. Do you want one of us to fly to your house with a pure female Endler, genetically tested?

Better question......Can you PROVE to us that there are no female Endlers?

 

[Lynden]

Lets just enjoy them - whatever their name is.

Thats the best sentence ive heard all week. Lets all follow this advice.

Female Endlers' give birth every 28 days, guppies take longer. There's a nice anti-no female Endler argument. If you are suggesting that 'survival of the fittest' would eventually weed out female Endlers in favour of female guppies, you are totally wrong. Since female Endlers breed more than female guppies, eventually the total amount of guppies in a particular environment would be far surpassed by the population of Endlers. Also, female Endlers and guppies both attempt to breed with the most colourful male they can find. In a mixed environment of male guppies and male Endlers, both female Endlers and female guppies would choose male Endlers, because their colours are brighter (a sign of a stronger bloodline). Therefore if anything, within about 10 generations all female guppies would be bred out of existance. Incase you don't understand:
Gen 1 - male (m) endler (e) breed (x) with female (f) guppy (g) = offspring which are 50/50 e/g
Gen 2 - m e x f g = offspring 75/25 e/g
Gen 3 - m e x f g = and so on. Choosing the 'purest' male Endlers all the time WILL reduce guppy bloodlines.

Therefore I don't see your hypothesis of female Endlers becoming extinct to be true at all.

My guppies birth every 25 days or so. "Good argument" indeed.
Very good point though. With one fatal error: Larger fish are a better indicator of strong bloodline. Endlers are tiny. My female guppies breed with the big males far more than they breed with the endlers. In fact, in a mixed tank, the miniscule endler males are often reffered to as "satellite males" who must sneak their genetic materials in if they want to continue. Also, the bigger the male, the stronger they are, and we all know guppies need strength to mate. The endlers are simply pushed out of the way in a mixed area.

(Please, i am waiting patiently for somebody to prove me wrong! I posted this thread to learn that I am wrong! TFF is a place for learning, after all. Its a bit of a test really )

How exactly do you want to be proven wrong? I think a lot of people are putting up good arguements that there ARE female Endlers, yet you seem to want something more. Do you want one of us to fly to your house with a pure female Endler, genetically tested?

Better question......Can you PROVE to us that there are no female Endlers?

Thats an excellent idea And no, i cannot prove my theory. Not now, at least. I dont have much confidence in it, really. I wanted to see if you guys could bring up the iron evidence needed to defeat me. I am going to comprimise and say that we are both slightly incorrect and say that there are in fact, endler females, however they are not "pure", since their distant ancestors were guppies. And maybe someone will prove even that wrong............

-Lynden

P.S., the name for an amazon molly is actually P. formosa, sorry. However the old name for platies was Platypoecilius maculata, not just Poecilia maculata. The amazons are indeed an all female society, hence the name amazon. Get it?

 

[nmonks]

Hello,

Interesting thread.

I'm coming to this as someone who did his PhD in systematics, cladistics of ammonites to be precise, and let me tell you that if you think defining species of living animals is tricky, it's nothing compared to doing the same with fossils!

One thing I learned is that systematists -- scientists who classify different organisms -- can be divided into two groups, "lumpers" and "splitters". Lumpers see variation as 'background noise' if you like, so to take one example they might classify European bison and American buffalo as a single species with some local variation. Splitters zoom in on the differences, and create taxonomic groups for consistently recognisable populations, so European bison and American buffalo would be different species. Lots and lots of animals throw up these sorts of problems: giraffes, cheetahs, tigers, wolves, and wild cats are all animals with a lot of regional variation with regard to things like colouration and markings, and hence have often been sometimes divided into lots of species, and other times lumped into just one. Subspecies, races, varieties and so on are all ways of side-stepping the problem, keeping the coherence of the species while recognising the variation within it. According to some systematists, we are the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, as contrasted with Homo sapiens neanderthalis. Other systematists consider Homo neanderthalis to be a species in its own right.

What's this got to do with Endler guppies I hear you ask. Lots.

Endler guppies as known in the aquarium hobby may or may not be genetically pure derivatives of the population found in a single lake in Venezuela by John Endler back in the 1970s (I think). These wild Endler guppies supposedly live in a slightly different ecological niche than wild regular guppies, specifically slightly cooler water. In the wild at least, the two fish don't overlap much, with one replacing the other where their preferred habitats merge.

This, in and of itself doesn't make it a different species. Siberian tigers and Sumatran tigers obviously inhabit completely different habitats (tundra vs. rain forest) yet they are one and the same species. They are physically different as well, Siberian tigers being about twice the mass of a Sumatran tiger, as well as having longer fur. So colours and size can vary dramatically within a single species.

So, in short: size, colour, and ecological preference, as well as habitat, can vary within a species. None of these things define a species.

In fact it is very difficult to define a species. A common, but flawed, criterion (probably the one you learned in school) is that if one thing can mate with another and produce fertile offspring, then they're the same species. While this broadly is true, there are lots of exceptions, so it isn't a perfect definition. Moreover, things like behaviour that effectively isolate males and females of different species in the wild might not work in captivity, so the fact that many fish hybridise in aquaria doesn't mean they belong to a single species.

(By them way, as I understand it, the Endler guppies sold in fish stores may (probably) have some regular guppy ancestors simply because lots of people (and commercial breeders) aren't careful about separating them. Moreover, for example, a retailer gets given a bunch of fish that are hybrids between guppies and Endlers, there's a strong temptation for him to sell them as Endlers because he'll get much more money per fish.)

Anyway, without knowing more about Endlers, my take as a systematist is that they don't look to me like a robust, clearly recognisable species, and even if one fish taxonomist describes them as a new species, it won't be long before another (a lumper) puts them back in with the regular guppies. To me, someone who knows a little about taxonomy but nothing about Endlers, they look like nothing more (or less) than a geographical variation, a race or local population. Genetically distinct, yes, but no more a different species than Native Americans are from Native Australians.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[Lynden]

Perfect! Where have you been all this time?

 

[shiftingsands]

Great post.

 

[imouse]

Ok, to put forward my £0.02..
At present, Female Endlers (NOT Hybrid Guppie x) do exist and are different to the standard Female Guppy in shape, size, colouration and most importantly, availability in/from lfs.
The regular Females available from your lfs will be derived from guppy stock or indeed will be guppies.
A visual indicator is the cartilage membrane of the tail fin which can be tainted with a colour tinge, be it black, yellow, blue etc but can be noticed, even a shadow on this fin means Guppy bloodlines.

Size.. is another indicator of heritage, the true Endler female is nowhere near the size of a full grown F guppy and unfortunatley, most 'Endler' females are juvenile F Guppies that grow to 3 ~ 4 times the size of the males. True Endlers reach twice the size of the male.

Availability.. If you were able to import wild caught Venezualian Endlers (male & female ) you would certainly notice a huge difference to the 'standard' mass farmed variety that occupy the displays of the lfs. The wild males have a far more irridescant, transparent and variable colour scheme, whereas the females are an almost transparent olive green.

Fry.. a pure endler will produce approx 10~15max over a 30 day cycle, the guppy produces more as it matures to approx 20~30 over the same time scale.

Fish farms, if you were to start up a breeding centre and decided to start with Endlers, how would you cope with not being able to sell drab olive females? why ask this you may say, fact is that as with guppies, Endlers produce a strong ratio in favour of the female...
Extract from my October 04 batch journal...(06/10/04) 12 fry this morning, mother to recovery trap, feeding well. Update..(12/11/04) 12 going strong, 11 female, 1 male, male to 10gal, avoid crossbreeding
Extract from my October 05 batch journal...(11/10/05) 10 fry last night, guess @2 males. Update today..9 remain, 2 male, separated males. Survival rates exceeding Guppy fry


A number of years ago, i was lucky enough to be in contact with Armando Pou who has an astounding collection of Endlers and is indeed considered an expert in the study of Endlers. If you wish to seek more info Click here for link to his Endlers page
(Mods, if classified as unacceptable link, please feel free to remove)

In short, most of the livebearing fish that you and me purchase from an lfs will have had some kind of interbreeding at some stage in it's bloodline.

So, in response to your theory....

1. the identical looks derive from selected line breeding at fish farm levels (colour for profit etc. how many drab olive fish would you realistically sell in our hobby??)

2. Ummm Male Guppies don't resemble female Guppies either

3. 9.9999999 times out of 10 they are reticulata females just being sold for a higher price.

4. Sorry, but research on a genus with the same scientific prefix does not speak for the entire species/sub-species, especially when the late Donn Eric Rosen, the major taxonomic expert of the Poeciliidae died before completing the research and officially classifying the species. Endler's Poecilia is just a common name attached to visual research. The official classification may never be known.
Amazon molly not needing a male!! New scientist claims that they indeed do collect sperm for reproduction, it's just how they collect it that they don't understand. It is agreed that the fry from P.formosa are clones of the parent right down to cellular structure (not sure about DNA though)

5. Hmmm, have to do a bit more research on this one, but from memory, the Venezualan pools from where the first ones were collected were free of wild guppies. The ones collected by Prof John Endler were hybridised with wild guppy stock from a source a few km's away and were less advanced in colouration to their relatives(?).

If you do a google search on Endlers, you will soon find that yes, they do exist, just not in your usual outlets.
Again, if you were to contact your local Livebearers society, they will probably be able to supply you with some Pure Female Endlers, but beware, the price WILL make you think twice.

I will take some pics of Blue(yes, Blue) Male Endlers (pure) in comparison to the standard Orange (commercially farmed) ones for you along with pure female Endler alongside a Guppy female tomorrow sometime (if someone would be good enough to let me into the secret of posting a pic from hdd)(please)
My Blues have never been in contact with Guppies or orange Endlers and were aquired from a livebearers society @£15 each and a long long wait.


Hope this helps in some insignificant way, but to my mind, the Female Endler is in existence, just not in the shops.




mouse

 

[cybergoldfish]

mouse, if you go to www.photobucket.com and register for a (free) account, you can upload photos very easily. I'm immensely interested in these pure blue Endlers, I always presumed that the orangey ones are pure. What country are you in? And what society do you belong to?

 

[shiftingsands]

I hope you have time to post the photos mouse, I would love to see your blue ELBs.

 

[Lynden]

I dont know what im doing wrong, but my female guppies do closely resemble the males

We have resolved the issue, and i know that they do exist.
Thanks for your post, it did help. Ill watch for the shadow if i ever find female endlers

The blue endlers sound stunning. Post as soon as you can! I will look forward to seeing them