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Blind Cave Tetra....eyeless or not?


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#1 Guest_butch_*

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Posted 13 September 2012 - 04:18 PM

Recently I went shopping at a lfs to get some banjo catfish, I came across a tank that has blind cave tetras. I noticed something funny about them....one has fully formed but still small eyes! Others has one fully formed small eye or just small dark spot in the eye region. Now I was told that adult blind cave tetra lost their eyes as the skin covered them....why not these guys?

#2 Guest_butch_*

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Posted 13 September 2012 - 08:21 PM

Well now I learned out that these fish are results of hybridizing between two different genetically populations of eyeless blind cave tetras. Apparently the hybridization can bring the eyes back.

#3 Guest_fundulus_*

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Posted 13 September 2012 - 09:37 PM

I was wondering... I didn't think any of the wild populations typically had fully developed eyes of any sort.

#4 Guest_butch_*

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Posted 13 September 2012 - 10:13 PM

I was wondering... I didn't think any of the wild populations typically had fully developed eyes of any sort.

Research has been performed that showed breeding seperate populations of blind cave fish actually brought back some tiny eyes. the populations evolved seperately(I believe) and breeding them back to each other apparently corrected the problem. There are so many genes involved with even just the eye that the alleles that depraved different populations were different, so cross breeding them brought back the allele that the other population was missing.




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