Guppies And Endlers Together?

[OldMan47]

I have no idea about the genetics of combining those fish. In an endler, the male almost completely dominates the outcome of a breeding in terms of color. I got unselected males and females with my first breeding colony but I selected a couple of males with the particular color patterns that I liked from all of the ones I saw in my big breeding colony. The next generation of fish were almost exactly like those 2 males which led me to think that the females did not contribute much, if anything, to the final outcome of color patterns. That colony is the one that I showed in a picture. I(f you look closely at that picture all of the males are very much alike. The colony that they were taken from was anything but consistent on color patterns. That other colony still shows much more color diversity than the one I established using 2 very similar males. I was reaslly trying to replicate this guy but I expected it to be much harder to do with that diverse breeding colony background.

The red bottom sword appeared on only 2 of my dozens of males, the ones I added to random females, but I can see it everywhere in my big colony today.

 

[BlueDragon]

Thanks OldMan, that's really interesting. Sounds like male Endlers have some pretty dominant genes in them. So they can be quite predictable in the end as far as colour goes if you use more than one male with the same-ish colour/pattern you like most? Females are able to store sperm from more than one male, is that right? So maybe the two males created a sort of super gene for their certain colour? I know that can happen in other Animals. But with your other colony there were lots of different coloured males so no overly dominant genes created from two or more?

I am just guessing though. Obviously. Apparently I like to confuse myself sometimes : )

 

[Zante]

Here's a thought... if endlers and guppies cross-breed so easily should they be considered different species?

I'm talking as a person who's never had livebearers, I stumbled upon this thread, but if you think about it, cats can interbreed between different breeds, and different breeds do look very different, but they are the same species: cats. In the same way that a persian/sphynx is not a purebred cat, it is still a cat.

Maybe the analogy is even clearer with dogs: a german shepherd and a greyhound look VERY different, but they can interbreed and nobody would think of saying that they are different species.

Any thoughts on that?

 

[*pete*]

Zante...my thoughts exactly...I'm sure OldMan47 will enlighten us

 

[HAMBONE]

Fishblast's first picture is what is called a tiger endler, it is an hybrid. The second picture looks sort of like a wild guppy, not an endler. The rest are obviously guppies.
I do keep wild type endlers like this guy

and this group in a breeding colony.

As you can see, the females are very plain fish with no coloring at all except in rare cases where the body color is what they call blonde instead of gray, but even then it is the whole body in one color. There are no fancy tails at all.

what size tank do you use for your breeding colony?

 

[BlueDragon]

Here's a thought... if endlers and guppies cross-breed so easily should they be considered different species?

I'm talking as a person who's never had livebearers, I stumbled upon this thread, but if you think about it, cats can interbreed between different breeds, and different breeds do look very different, but they are the same species: cats. In the same way that a persian/sphynx is not a purebred cat, it is still a cat.

Maybe the analogy is even clearer with dogs: a german shepherd and a greyhound look VERY different, but they can interbreed and nobody would think of saying that they are different species.

Any thoughts on that?

From what I'v been reading there's a lot of people who don't see them as a different species, but just a dwarf species of Guppy. I think there's a lot people out there that think that they should be re-classed. But if they really are extinct in the wild how likly is that to happen now? I mean, in truth they shouldn't even be called Endlers Guppy, they should be called The Bond Guppy. So it's all a bit wrong really, isn't it?

 

[Essjay]

Pure endlers have a different scientific name. They are Poecilia wingei, as opposed to guppies which are Poecilia reticulata. I remember the controversy a few years ago about whether endlers were a separate species, or just a subspecies of guppy. Then they were given a different scientific name, which means that taxonomists found enough differences to decide they were actually two different species. Fishbase has endlers listed as a separate species, together with the information that the scientific name was given in 2005 by Poeser, Kempkes & Isbrücker. Fishbase also says that guppies were give the name Poecilia reticulata in 1859 by Peters.

I would hazard a guess (just a guess) that guppies and endlers have a common ancestor, which ended up being physically separated into 2 groups. One evolved to become guppies, the other evolved to become endlers. Because they can interbreed so easily, this indicates to me that the split occurred pretty recently in evolutionary timescales.
Of course that could be utter rubbish!

 

[Zante]

Pure endlers have a different scientific name. They are Poecilia wingei, as opposed to guppies which are Poecilia reticulata. I remember the controversy a few years ago about whether endlers were a separate species, or just a subspecies of guppy. Then they were given a different scientific name, which means that taxonomists found enough differences to decide they were actually two different species. Fishbase has endlers listed as a separate species, together with the information that the scientific name was given in 2005 by Poeser, Kempkes & Isbrücker. Fishbase also says that guppies were give the name Poecilia reticulata in 1859 by Peters.

I would hazard a guess (just a guess) that guppies and endlers have a common ancestor, which ended up being physically separated into 2 groups. One evolved to become guppies, the other evolved to become endlers. Because they can interbreed so easily, this indicates to me that the split occurred pretty recently in evolutionary timescales.
Of course that could be utter rubbish!

That is actually a good hypothesis. I suppose you could say they are not quite separate species yet, and the crossbreedind that has been happening in captivity has reversed the trend.

 

[BlueDragon]

Makes sense to me essjay : )

 

[OldMan47]

Zante, that question has been asked again and again. Right now endlers and guppies are considered separate species as P. wingei and P. reticulata but many people will dispute separating them.
A lot depends on your perspective. If you like to lump things together, they are all guppies but if you are a "splitter" you will recognize the differences that make it easy for me to tell them apart and will consider them separate species. Lumpers will insist that any animal that can breed with another and produce fertile offspring is a single species. If you are a lumper most of the platy and swordtail species would fit into maybe 2 or 3 species because they can indeed be bred and will produce fertile offspring. Most people recognize the dozens of separate wild species falling into the genus Xiphophorus but a major lumper would not. If you are a splitter, as is the present focus of many breeders, you will even track the source of seemingly identical fish from different sources just in case they are later proven to be separate species by genetic analysis.
In fact, the genetic analysis that has been done on guppies and endlers, using gene mapping tends to show that they really are separate species but that does not influence the lumpers one bit. They continue to insist that they must be the same species since they can cross. As you may be able to tell from this, I tend more to the splitter ranks but recognize that I may well be wrong.

 

[FishBlast]

Now I'm pondering whether I should restart a guppy colony or start on egg layer exclusive tank. I guess I'll have to wait till I can finally put the other tank to use.