Type B Grande Terre

[Philippe deVosjoli]

Anyone out there with Type B Grande Terre? There's really little information on these and one wonders if some are not GT X henkeli hybrids. A more precise key would sure be helpful.

[Luc]

Would you consider this an type b gt ? http://www.photos.repashy.com/data/503/medium/Leachianus_leachianus.jpg

[Allen Repashy]

You can't really tell for certain by looking at any of them. If you don't KNOW the history of your gecko from a RELIABLE source... you can never really call your gecko anything other than a leachianus that is possibly a hybrid.... This is where responsibility comes in when it comes to breeders, and at this point, as Philippe and Michael have previously said.... if you can't trace your gecko back to the original imports and be 100% positive of the origin, then you can't sell your gecko as anything other than a miscellaneous leachianus :( It is unfortunate, but this doesn't mean there is anything wrong with your gecko... It is beautiful, healthy, and I am sure, quite enjoyable. But if you have to ask people who do not know the history of your gecko what kind it is..... I am afraid that you can never really put a label on it as bieng any specific "type" of leachianus... It might "look" like a certain type, but you can not be positive withoug history, and it is unethical to just guess and sell it or offspring as a locality specific specimen.... This is the dillema we are all faced with.... at this point, there are very few locality specific individuals available with traceable roots.. So the best thing you can do is try and trace it's background from the person you got it from, and if there is no absolute proof, just enjoy your gecko..... and if you sell offspring, be clear in the fact that you can't guarantee if is a pure "locality" or "type" .......

Allen

[Philippe deVosjoli]

There's no way of knowing for sure without information on the source. What I have bought as type B GT look like some hybrid GTs I have and like some henkeli I have. That's why I'm inquiring about this type. I'll admit I wonder if some patterned GTs sold out of Europe might not have been hybrids. Only Seipp and Henkel may be able answer questions and provide a key on the Type B mentioned and represented in their book. We simply do not have enough examples here to make sense of it

[Luc]

I went to germany today and talked to several people who are breeding this morph all confirm that there hasn't been crossbreeding with henkeli's, the 2 animals i have are a lot bigger than the henkeli's off the same age I own they also have longer tails and heads. The original animals came from Seipp and Henkel but no one knows the exact location were this morph was found.

[Terri]

The original animals came from Seipp and Henkel but no one knows the exact location were this morph was found.
Do you know what year the original animals were collected? The people you are talking to must know enough to keep the lines pure, but at what point are they likely to be inbreeding too much since there were a limited number of specimens collected? I am trying to acquire a pair of Nuu Amis that are tracable pure locale here in the U.S.

[genevieve]

Allen,

Thank you for the above post! I was starting to feel a little slow not being able to ID my leachie locales from pics. There are a couple posts floating around that basically say that if you can't tell your locales apart, then it is really your fault if you end up with a mixed locale animal (which was represented as pure by the seller).

Genevieve

[S.T.]

I have a 2yr old pair of what I was told are true southern blotched GT R. L. Leachianus. They are definitely GT's, as far as being true to their origin? I guess only the original collector knows?

[Geoff Cunningham]

I have a 2yr old pair of what I was told are true southern blotched GT R. L. Leachianus. They are definitely GT's, as far as being true to their origin? I guess only the original collector knows?

I agree to many hybrids but on the smaller Island forms it not such a big deal as they all look very similar. However Grande Terre leachianus grows to a much larger size so It would be nice to keep this trait pure.

Here's my Grande Terre from Allen which I believe came from Philippe.

I'm looking for a female. PM me if you have one.

Thanks

http://files.tagworld.com/624d739c9c585fca44f2a69fd29b5032c4c4.jpeg

[Jeffy4321]

what is the weight of your grande terre?

[Luc]

I went to germany today and talked to several people who are breeding this morph all confirm that there hasn't been crossbreeding with henkeli's, the 2 animals i have are a lot bigger than the henkeli's off the same age I own they also have longer tails and heads. The original animals came from Seipp and Henkel but no one knows the exact location were this morph was found.

I contacted Henkel about the animal in the pic and he told me this morph is found in the southern part of Grand Terre, i think it are type c animals.

[Luc]

I went to the Hamm show yesterday and met the guy(Bodo Friedel) who produced the animals that were sold to the person I bought the GT's in the picture from. He told me his original animals were collected by Seipp in the mount Koghis area(But they are a different morph than the typical mount koghis dark morph) so this would make them type B, doesn't it ? He had lots off pictures from the GT's he produced and I was surprissed how different animals from the same bloodline and morph can look, I now know for certain that it is not possible to identifie morphs, only by looking at them and I also ask myself the question if these two morphs living in the same area don't interbreed in nature?

[Philippe deVosjoli]

This confirms the confusion associated with what I have categorized as type B. According to Henkel and Seipp's book, type B is smaller and found in a different niche than Mt. Koghis dark morphs. You need to realize first of all that for now we are just talking about different morphotypes. If in the same geographical area there is no reason why interbreeding could not occur. One possibility is a niche/genetic segregation based on competition. Larger animals more successfully compete for higher more prime niche. Smaller animals adapt to lower less prime niche. I'm saying this because in leachianus, size definitely makes for more successful intraspecies competition even if it is not ideal as an adaptation to a particular habitat.
That being said, if you examine a vegetational map of Grande Terre, you will find that it consists of forest islands often separated by prairie(west) or maquis ( scrub brush with small trees). Each of these geographically and genetically isolate GT populations. The best defined GT morphotype is the Yate GT type A originally collected by Frank Fast in the small Yate forest. From Mt Koghis, you do have a line of animals with dark background color and a small amount of white pattern that achieve large size. If line bred those characteristics are maintained. They are distinct from Type C which is highly patterned and grows larger than any other GT morphotype collected to date. For now I consider the original wild collected pair owned by Philip Tremper as the original captive representatives of type C. There are other differences including snout scalation that may help distinguish morphotypes but because little attention was paid to morphotypes in the past, it is difficult to assess the origins or morphotype of GT animals in captivity.
With GTs. the total number of animals collected from any forest location was so small ( a single pair in some cases) that a real future problem is a decline in vigor and fecundity of captive lines. We suspect from some island populations that inbreeding depression can occur. Unless additional collected animals are introduced to captive gene pools, then line breeding of GTs may ultimately not be a ideal course.