My old pigeon partner Jose Morales y Serranno, who met his wife , an Albuquerqe native of Italian descent, returned to Sevilla after getting his PhD in English- speaking writers of the Spanish Civil War. Despite occasional political disagreements- like Pepe’s fellow traveler on the left Stephen Spender, I will never think of Roy Campbell …
Tag: Genetics
Cryptic Cats
I always like finding new species, and am fascinated by “cryptic” ones that look just like others but have different DNA. (Are there really SEVEN Red Crossbills?) Not every species is really one, and if you obsess on the subject it will drive you mad. I like to argue and define, but my not quite …
More on Closed Registries
Population geneticist Federico Calboli is a frequent and outspoken commenter at Q. I sent him the material below even before I blogged it. Here, with his permission, are his thoughts. As he is not affiliated with any breeding organization his freedom from bias is clear. If you believe that simply picking from two healthy parents …
Clear Thinking on Genetic Diversity
Every breeder of domestic animals with a closed studbook should read this, all of it. Most important is the section the writer, Jeffrey Bragg, calls Principles for the Breeder. (MANY thanks to Daniela Imre). “The great majority of dog breeds have been bred within a completely closed studbook for sixty to a hundred years or …
Beating the Drum Again…
Arguments in the saluki- tazi world again (and implicitly in the whole dog world) on closed studbooks, “invalid colors”, the usual. And as always, sane and scientific counsel from John Burchard: “I think we have to remember that the breed subdivisions within the “oriental sighthound” group are to some considerable extent a Western artifact which …
The Dangers of Inbreeding
Patrick and I tend to go on about how the closed- studbook model of breeding and breeds, a relict of the 19th century’s imperfect understanding of genetics, is deleterious and dysfunctional, but I haven’t said much on it here. Reader Mike spies and I recently had an interesting discussion on this matter,and he gave me …
Bully Whippets
Mary, Patrick, Matt, and Reid all tipped me to this fascinating NYT science piece on so- called “bully whippets”. Thses stout over- muscled dogs are what happens when you inbreed too much seeking a single character, in this case speed. When the whippets are heterozygous for a certain gene they are fast, but when they …