Would it be possible...

[Tula_Montage]

I was thinking about this recently, when talking to some friends about my first planned clutches. I was saying that If I lived in corn habitat ie Florida then I know what I would do as a little experiment with any surplus normal corns I produced

35 years of being bred in captivity has obviously not outbred a corns natural instinct to hide, hunt, bask etc. Ok so my question is, would or has anybody taken eggs produced in captivity and put them back into the wild to incubate naturally? Assuming they hatched, what do you think the chances are of the babies to make it through the first few months of their lives? Adulthood would be a miracle obviously, as very few corns survive that long in the wild, thats just life. I can't see how it would benefit or harm the existing corn population, nor can I see why anyone would really do it. But has anyone actually tried it?

I understand that recording any data on any of the corns after hatching would be near impossible. UNLESS, would it be possible to microchip a captive bred corn right out of the egg, then release it back into the wild? And what would that information be worth? Could it help expand our knowledge of corn snakes in the wild? :shrugs:

Just a few random thoughts that popped into my mad insomniac mind.

 

[bill38112]

Considering how quickly,the burmese python established itself in the everglades, I have no doubt that captive bred hatchlings would establish themselves as well. I would think in the same percentage as wild corns, i.e. very low.

 

[Blue Apple Herps]

Considering how quickly,the burmese python established itself in the everglades, I have no doubt that captive bred hatchlings would establish themselves as well. I would think in the same percentage as wild corns, i.e. very low.

Yeah, I'm sure only a small portion would ever grow up to adulthood and successfully reproduce. But I'm sure a couple would - assuming they were normals. Althoug anerys and maybe even caramels would probably fare ok.

 

[Tula_Montage]

Would be interesting to release a clutch of lav bloods and see who finds an adult in the future LOL

 

[snakewispera snr]

In south wales theres a colony of rat/corn snakes doing well. :cheers:
I say rat/corn as we have yet to find one for a formal identification.
but the description from locals indicates one of them. :cheers:

 

[Checkerbelly]

I would be upset if people purposely planted captive bred corns into the wild. Especially if they were morphs. But even if they were normals.

Say for instance I live in Florida in the midst of a healthy population of "miami phase" normal corns. Maybe they don't have all the traits that a breeder of miami phase corns looks for, but to me they're the best-looking snakes out there. What if I grew up finding these snakes my entire life and I knew that nobody else in any other area could go out in their back yard and find one? Then somebody starts letting hundreds of "okeetee phase" normals go into the wild for whatever reason. Maybe it's because they think they're beautiful, and maybe they are. But you've just lost a whole locality of miamis. That makes it not worth it to me.

 

[Roy Munson]

I would be upset if people purposely planted captive bred corns into the wild. Especially if they were morphs. But even if they were normals.

Say for instance I live in Florida in the midst of a healthy population of "miami phase" normal corns. Maybe they don't have all the traits that a breeder of miami phase corns looks for, but to me they're the best-looking snakes out there. What if I grew up finding these snakes my entire life and I knew that nobody else in any other area could go out in their back yard and find one? Then somebody starts letting hundreds of "okeetee phase" normals go into the wild for whatever reason. Maybe it's because they think they're beautiful, and maybe they are. But you've just lost a whole locality of miamis. That makes it not worth it to me.

I don't like the idea either, and you've also given my reason for not liking it.

A lot of morphs would probably do fairly well if released into the geographic range of corns, but I think that many would not. I can't imagine hatchling blizzards, opals, or snows avoiding predation for long, but a caramel stripe or a pewter might make it.

 

[snakewispera snr]

perhaps you should consider the fact that they could get into the wild from a gravid escapee.

 

[Duff]

perhaps you should consider the fact that they could get into the wild from a gravid escapee.

Accidents will and I'm sure have happened, but I think the point is intentionally releasing. Personally, although it may or may not harm the local population, I'm against it. Leaving out morph or locality look issues (which are still valid reasons), nature usually does a pretty good job of controlling populations, and anything we do, good or bad, can throw that balance out the window. The only time I think it's acceptable to release an animal into the wild, is if it was originally collected from the same area being released back to.

 

[Pet Corn Snake]

I think that would make a interesting experiment Tula! someone should actually do it, I know most captivity bred pets can live in there natural home, I know in the lake not far from my town there is a family of ghost carp, witch is rather big for them kind of fish, but I know the owner who realized them when they were tiny, and they have lived this long, I know there not snakes, but its just one example of captivity bred animals going WILD!

-George-

 

[Pet Corn Snake]

I think that would make a interesting experiment Tula! someone should actually do it, I know most captivity bred pets can live in there natural home, I know in the lake not far from my town there is a family of ghost carp, witch is rather big for them kind of fish, but I know the owner who realized them when they were tiny, and they have lived this long, I know there not snakes, but its just one example of captivity bred animals going WILD!

-George-

P.s,
everyone has fair points on this thread, I don't know how it would effect the morphs of the wild corns in that area, so i cant comment, but I do think the results would be interesting..

 

[snakewispera snr]

Its well documented through out history that mans introduction of alien species usually goes reals bad , cane toads being a good example.
the Romans introduced rabbits to Britain, real bad move.
A lighthouse keepers cat discovered a type of bird and exterminated it at the same time. So we're not so hot at introduction, but its a fact that more Tigers live in Texas than in the wild so meddling works sometimes and sometimes it don't.

 

[Jay@PJCReptiles]

Would be interesting to release a clutch of lav bloods and see who finds an adult in the future LOL

OMG Elle,
Someone needs to save this girl from herself :crazy02: (just kidding). Just let me know where you are going to realease this clutch of Lavender Bloodreds OK? Then in a couple years I will show you a pair of viable adults. :grin01: :sidestep:
Jay

 

[desertanimal]

I can't see how it would benefit or harm the existing corn population . . .

I'm glad this came up again. It's been bothering me for a while. Someone already made the point that we don't know what releasing CB animals into the wild will do to natural populations--a point, in my view, that should be sufficient to prevent anyone from doing it. But, in past discussions, many have suggested that it won't do any harm. However, we now know that it COULD. What our selective breeding does is increase, in our captive populations, the proportion of alleles that are rare in natural populations. So, the alleles for bloodred are out there, but not common. As are the alleles for anerythrism and amelanism. They're there, but they're rare. We artificially select for those alleles, and by doing so, we increase their proportions in our CB populations. If we release CB animals, then, we change the allele frequencies of natural populations by introducing our animals into them. No problem, some say. But, we now know that there is an allele floating around in our captive populations that causes stargazing. Stargazing isn't a good thing for a wild cornsnake. Yes, this allele almost certainly (though not definitely--it is POSSIBLE that this mutation originally occurred in a CB animal, though I doubt that very highly) exists in some (but possibly not all) populations of cornsnakes. However, selecting for rare "desirable" alleles in captivity has almost certainly resulted in an unintended increase the incidence of the stargazing allele in at least some populations of CB corns. That's not a problem in CB populations, but we sure shouldn't be releasing CB corns into the wild who have a higher than "natural" probability of having any deleterious alleles. And the problem is, we don't know that ANY CB animals have the same probability of carrying deleterious alleles as natural populations, because we don't know what the deleterious alleles are until we've accidentally increased their incidence in captive populations via our selection for other alleles. But just because we don't know they're there doesn't mean we haven't been selecting for them via linkages to other "desirable" alleles all along. I'm glad this stargazing allele was discovered, just so that this point, which was logically sound all along, has now been backed up by some data.

It is also possible for a mutation to occur and to spread in CB populations that wouldn't be selected out in captivity, but that might bestow decreased fitness on wild animals carrying it. We just don't know. We might think we know that our CB corns are just as wild as wild ones, but we really don't know that. I was recently told by a conservation biologist about a rattlesnake breeding and re-introduction program that failed because the CB animals that were being released (I don't know what species or where) behaved differently than wild ones. Baby CB snakes stayed out in the open more than wild ones--too much--and were promptly eaten. Nobody knows what might contribute to these things. Maybe environment, maybe the result of relaxed selection pressures allowing a less-finely-tuned (genetically) animal to live and reproduce in captivity. And that's the point. We don't know what we're really releasing when we release CB animals into the wild.

 

[Tula_Montage]

Thank you desertanimal. This is the exact kind of answer I was looking for. Logical and to the point... Valid points that I can perfectly understand at that.

What about putting a clutch of eggs to inclubate in the wild and see if they actually hatch. Recreate an environment for them to hatch outside and go off into that big wild world?

 

[desertanimal]

I'm a little confused by your question, maybe. If I understand it correctly, then my answer is that if you put a CB clutch into the wild, you effectively release CB allele frequencies into wild populations. Not all of your hatchlings might survive, just like with wild hatchlings, but hatching outside won't change the fact that the clutch comes from a CB population and potentially carries with it all of the problems and/or perturbations from wild populations listed above.

Is that what you were asking?

 

[Drizzt80]

Would it be any different than the groups that collect sea turtle eggs, hatch them, and then release them to the wild? Their efforts of course are to save the sea turtle . . .

As for releasing increased alleles into the wild population. The alleles started there didn't they? There may be an increased number that would breed out in the wild as they are "closer to the surface", but natural selection (ie. a hungry hawk) would quite readily take care of those. Thus, you are feeding another population of animal . . .

D80

 

[rekn]

theyre taking wild eggs, holding them and then releasing the babies. theres no mating going on with them

 

[desertanimal]

Would it be any different than the groups that collect sea turtle eggs, hatch them, and then release them to the wild? Their efforts of course are to save the sea turtle . . .

Yes. It's different because those turtle eggs are wild ones. Born of wild parents who were subject to the exact same selection pressures as all of the other wild animals in that population. For a brief period of time, these genetically wild individuals are released from some selection pressure. Then, they are returned to them. Those are wild turtles, which are hatched in captivity, and then released into the wild. The original question was about hatching a CB clutch in the wild. So that's the difference. You know the allele frequencies of the wild turtle clutch represent their little portion of the wild population allele frequencies, because they are a part of it. You don't know if your CB eggs match the allele frequencies of the wild population. Now, was that temporary relaxation of selection pressures on those turtle eggs (and thereby, on whatever genes contributed to that mother's nest-selection site) messing with things? You bet. But population biologists and conservationists realize that, and they also realize that that degree of messing with things is probably necesssary for the very survival of these populations. Captive breeding and reintroduction is even futher messing with things, just as I have outlined. But sometimes it's a choice that is made by conservationists with eyes wide open because there are no other options. And usually, they don't succeed very well. The arabian oryx is the fairy tale CB-re-into story. It happened, but it was a magical event that hasn't happened for other re-into programs.

As for releasing increased alleles into the wild population. The alleles started there didn't they? There may be an increased number that would breed out in the wild as they are "closer to the surface", but natural selection (ie. a hungry hawk) would quite readily take care of those. Thus, you are feeding another population of animal . . .

D80

Most if not all of these alleles did start out in the wild, as I said. BUT there may be some we don't know about that started out in captivity. Mutations happen all the time, both in the wild and in captivity. But the selection pressures on captive and wild animals couldn't be more different. So there might be new alleles in captive populations that would be "bad" in wild populations. And sure, if released, whether we're releasing new alleles or just more of the rare wild alleles, the disturbance to phenotype frequencies might quickly equilibrate as you suggest. But if you're dealing with a recessive allele, you would still have increased the allele frequencies of bad alleles in the natural population. (Just pretend you're releasing normals that have been produced from lavender lines and pretend that lavender is a bad allele in the wild.) Sure, the homozygous for the bad allele will get eaten, but there will now also be more carriers (heterozygotes) running around, meeting up with each other and popping out more messed up homozygous babies more often, that then get eaten by predators more often. This increases the predator population, thereby increasing predation pressure on the population as a whole from what it was before you let your CB animals go.

 

[Tula_Montage]

Desertanimal, what I was asking was, what impact, negative or positive could placing a clutch of eggs (laid in captivity), unhatched corn snakes into the wild in appropriate hatching conditions? Could knowing where those eggs were and monitoring them not give us more information about eggs in the wild? IE how long it took them to hatch, if indeed they did, how many would rot, how many would still be there after a few months?!