Last year, Brandon Maines gifted me a group of hisser hybrids he had made between Gromphadorhina portentosa "LLE Mahogany" and Princisia vanwaerebeki "Tiger". The original cross was between a male Tiger and a female Mahogany, the resulting offspring have proven rather virile and have mostly adopted the coloration of their mother, which makes sense genetically.
However they have some distinct differences to the trained eye, mostly visible in the males. Said "Tiger Hog" males (Tiger Hog being the name Brandon has coined for this project), often have a shallow pronotum notch (a feature of Princisia), and much paler abdomens than normal Mahogany males do. Their thoracic coloration is different from Mahoganies as well, and the lateral margins of the thoracic pads of both males and females are more heavily curved than in portentosa (again more in line with Princisia morphology). Unfortunately other than the aforementioned thoracic pad differences, female "Tiger Hogs" look very very similar to pure "Mahogany" females. So I would not trust the average person to be able to reliably tell these apart from pure Mahoganies, which makes me very hesitant to ever part with any of these... at least, not without some more genetic foolery.
Now is perhaps the best time to share a dream of mine... a world in which designer hisser hybrids are as carefully bred and maintained as us enthusiasts do the pure species. Not just the random, mislabeled mutts we currently have circulating in the hobby (most of which are nade by accident), but purposely made hybrids, interspecies and intergeneric crosses, line bred for specific traits and labeled very meticulously and distinctly so as to avoid confusion and mixing with other stocks my accident.
To further that end, among many other things we are gonna need some new naming conventions... I propose that we steal the horticulturist notion of nothospecies and nothogenera, made up species and genus names for specific hybrid mixes. The cacti hobbyists' method of nothogenera in particular is what I would like to adopt.
A nothospecies is a name for an interspecies cross within a single genus. For example, the resulting offspring to come from crossing Gromphadorhina portentosa to G.oblongonata could be considered a nothospecies. A nothogenus would be an intergeneric cross, like a Gromphadorhina species to Princisia, or Princisia to Aeluropoda, etc..
These names are not completely without rules and guidelines for creation, there are in fact some conventions to keep in mind;
- It is generally recommended that for nothogenera, it be a combination of the two genera names involved in the cross, to make it more clear and helpful for understanding what genetics are at play.
- For naming nothogenera, when combining the genera names of the parents involved, the sexes of the parents used in the cross does matter, as the binomial name of the female in the cross gets first priority. So for example, if it was a male Princisia crossed to a female Gromphadorhina, you would name the resulting nothogenus "Gromphcisia". Whereas when crossing a male Gromphadorhina to a female Princisia, that resulting nothogenus would be named "Princorhina" or something similar.
- A hybrid name does not necessarily refer to a morphologically distinctive group, but applies to all progeny of the parents, no matter how much they vary. For example, the nothospecies name Gromphadorhina portengonota would be applied to all progeny from the cross Gromphadorhina portentosa × Gromphadorhina oblongonota, and those hybrids' resulting progeny, as well as from crosses of any of the progeny back to the parents (backcrossing). This can encompass a wide range of morphology and coloration differences between different line bred strains, all of which may have different strain names, but would still be considered the same nothospecies.
- Once a nothogenus or species has been initially created and named, anyone replicating said cross afterwards should adhere to said names, otherwise things would get way too confusing. We don't need a million different nothotaxa names for the same cross, even if they look a little different, you would just put a new strain name after the binomial one.
- When it comes to naming nothospecies, the rules are a little more lax. Obviously it should be latinized, unlike a simple strain name, and it's advised you attempt to incorporate the names of both parents, either their binomial names or the strain/locality names, again to make clearer what the cross is and to adequately describe the animal in question.
- Random, accidentally created hisser mutts that can not be properly lineage traced should not be given nothotaxa names. Rather, just call them Gromphadorini sp. "Hybrid" or plain old "Hisser Mutts".
- Lastly, it should be noted that when it comes to making strain names, more research and attempts need to be made to verify whether hybrid lines can truly be line bred for specific traits, and so one should refrain from creating a new commercial strain name for specific line bred traits until said line breeding has proven true (backcrossing is a different story, since that will almost certainly affect genetics in a noticeable way). That being said, strain names even just for personal use when attempting to create new lines are still very important to use to help differentiate the different lines being created/isolated and to avoid accidental mixing, lest you accidentally mix some cultures up and undo generations of line breeding/crossing.
Hopefully that all made some sense, and explains where I'll be coming from with these naming conventions for now on. 😅
So, all that being said, we are going with the nothospecies and strain name Gromphcisia mahoganitigris "Tiger Hog" for this particular cross. Gromphcisia obviously being the combination between Gromphadorhina and Princisia, and mahoganitigris being a more fanciful combination of the scientific names of Swietenia mahagoni (West Indian Mahogany) and Panthera tigris (Tiger), obviously in reference to the strain names of each of the parent hissers. And then the strain name for this particular line, "Tiger Hog", obviously again a reference to the strain names "Mahogany" and "Tiger".
Other named strains may eventually be isolated and line bred from this one or subsequent backcrosses, but they would all still be classified as Gromphcisia mahoganitigris, just with different strain names afterwards.
Anyways, without further ado, here are some pictures of these "Tiger Hogs", and a male G.portentosa "LLE Mahogany" for comparison:
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| "Tiger Hog" Males |
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| Female "Tiger Hog" |
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| "Tiger Hog" Pair |
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| Tiger Hog male (Top) vs Mahogany male (Bottom) |
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| Tiger Hog male (Bottom) vs Mahogany male (Top) |
Pretty right? But still superficially very similar to pure Mahoganies... which is why I've taken a "Tiger Hog" female and paired her with a Tiger male, to introduce more Tiger genes into the line. She's already given birth, and with these extra Tiger genetics (and perhaps some line breeding), I will do my best to create a more refined "Super Tiger Hog" line that looks more like a half/half mix of these two species.
And, as a reminder, they would be named Gromphcisia mahoganitigris "Super Tiger Hog"; again the nothospecies name would not change because it is merely a backcross, but a new strain name can be used for a sufficiently different looking line.
Hopefully the nothotaxa convention I've outlined here (again, an already existing framework I've just stolen from horticulture hobbyists) will catch on, and hopefully we can enter an era of purposely made, fancy line bred hisser hybrids that are not only labeled correctly, but maintained in a manner consistent with that of pure hisser stocks. If done right, we could have more diversity in our hobby hissers, rather than less, but if rampant mislabeling and accidental crossing ensues, we could end up losing a lot of unique stocks, both pure stocks and line bred hybrid strains... so we have to be careful here, very careful.
Anyways, that does it for this post, thanks to anyone who read my rambling LOL. 😆 If anyone has any corrections, objections or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments below! Hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next post! 😉
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