User:Eilya/BeetleBreedingThoughts

Eilya's Thoughts on Beetle Breeding

I started my beetle breeding from scratch with a few wild beetles (one of each of Burrowing, Speckled and Plains). I also added some wild beetles from my alt Iril, and we both corked the tanks for a while, so my beetles are the product of two avatars. I don't know to what extent this has affected my results.

The long-standing guide says to setup MPT (Male Pattern Tank - 2F, 9M) and FPT (Female Pattern Tank - 2M, 9F) but doesn't really say WHY. I read it lots of times trying to see what it was getting at, and in the end decided to just do my own thing. From experience I think the WHY is the following:

1) A ratio of greater than 4:1 gives a high likelihood of breeding talking place by the pair of males or females you are using. 2) With only 2M or 2F in one tank it is easier to see what breeding takes place.

I still haven't decided why they go for 9 plain colour etc, as I have not yet seen a truly plain colour, everything I have has a subtle pattern underneath, even if it is the same colour, and this affects the outcome. Maybe this will come later on as my beetles designs become purer. For this reason I found it better to work with a mix of males and females of the same pattern - UNLESS I was trying specifically to move a pattern onto one colour.

My approach to breeding has been to have 10+ beetles in a tank of similar pattern and try to "push" the pattern in the direction I wanted. The way I did this was to cull/remove any new beetle that didn't go towards the pattern I wanted. Selective breeding so to speak.

Things I have seen are documented below.

Mutation

A pattern seems to mutate best when 8 to 10 beetles of a very similar pattern and colour are together, less so when many other different strains are present. Whether this is just more obvious when this is so, or whether it is a genuine rule I don't know. But it is the case.

When a mutation occurs the pattern changes dramatically, may become chaotic, often develops a startlingly different colour, and may even increase the number of colours present.

Sometimes the beetle will mutate directly into a definite design, like a Triangle or Diamond motif, others it will mutate into a choatic strain which contains the motif that will gradually emerge as it breeds. (For instance a dot on an otherwise plain beetle that grows into a diamond shape).

When mutation does not occur the offspring can be clearly seen to be a product of its parents, having a similar pattern, colour or hue as one or both of the parents.

After several generations mutations can sometimes clearly be seen to be throw-backs to previous patterns you have grown. This led me to believe that some kind of genetic history is held on a beetle, although it may be more of a genetic timeline, and the beetle mutates up and down the timeline. We will see...

Triangles

Triangles were the first obviously geometric shape I met. It arose first out of a mutation that I was calling "Waspy" which was a vivid pattern of several colours that reminded me of a wasp. This eventually mutated into sets of triangles on a clear plain background. There is still variation in the pattern, how much it "protrudes" from the plain colour below, the ratio of the colours, but several things stood out.

There are 3 layers of colour, sometimes 3 hues of the same colour (ie 3 different greens) and sometime 3 distinct colours that seem to have a relationship to each other (like opposites etc). A plain background and two triangles of different colours is the norm, although they can quite often be very close in hue, so as to become a single colour overall. This led me to see a sort of layering, both of pattern and colour at times.

  ZigZags

Triangles are the easiest shape to direct. I found that they tend to either diverge or converge in offspring. If you continually cull the diverging triangles, and leave the converging ones they will become a pattern I call "Lines" where the triangles overlap so much that only lines are left of the shape. Continue with this process and the background colour will actually become the dominant shape, as it forms wide, zigzagging lines. I call this pattern ZigZags, even though large triangles may still be present.

  Curls

If you cull the converging triangle and leave the diverging ones they will start to break up and mutate into curly edged shapes, sometimes a bit like cogs, this progresses to very large curly shapes on a plan background, or single colour beetles with a very delicate hint of curls underneath.