# Killies Import > Non-Killie Segment >  Back to the old days

## stormhawk

You fellas might be thinking what the thread title is about and here's the explanation.

I went visiting to my grandma's place and ended up going "fishing" for some wild feral guppies in the streams nearby with my younger cousins. Boy did we have alot of fun. We caught quite a number of large specimens, both males and females and some of the females had alot of colour in their tails!  :Shocked: 

Of course I was kinda shocked but the males were just as stunning.  :Very Happy:  

Anyway here's the images for today's Tiddler Fest.  :Laughing:  


The males.. cute aren't they?  :Very Happy: 

 
The females.. look closely at the right hand side of the tub, there's one female with a very colourful tail.  :Cool:

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## hwchoy

yeah miss my guppy scooping days too. seems the longkang guppies in Singapore has become much less common and not as colourful these days.

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## stormhawk

Choy, you'd be surprised. I found some REALLY colourful ones today. Even some of the females had some colour.  :Very Happy: 

Some of the males were lyretails and some had top swords. I found at least one male that had a bottom sword.

According to my cousin, when it rains there'll be a whole lot more as they're washed out of the drainage system from a pond or source higher up on the hillside.  :Cool:

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## hwchoy

oh you mean you caught them here in Singapore? I thought you went up north to visit your relatives.

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## stormhawk

Nah not in Malaysia. My grandma lives in Singapore. The relatives up north in Melaka are my grandpa's relatives.  :Wink:  

I have always thought of the guppies found in SG to be rather drab but these critters I caught today were surprisingly different from those I caught many years ago.

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## hwchoy

the ones I caught as a boy are like these. from a pond near the Natioinal Stadium (just completed but not yet open) and also from the small longkang in front of Orchard Towers.

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## stormhawk

Orchard Towers got longkang?!  :Shocked:  

 :Laughing:  If I could catch these in the Orchard area I'd be really surprised.

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## hwchoy

> Orchard Towers got longkang?!  
> 
>  If I could catch these in the Orchard area I'd be really surprised.


I mean when I was a boy lah. at that time of course no orchard tower, just longkang by the roadside (fast flowing water probably from cairnhill or something), a bus stop, and a row of shop house, one of them selling Noritake jap porcelain  :Smile: 


and who knows, ever since they covered up all the longkang and turn them into pedestrian walkway, I mean what do you think is below your feet as you walk in front of taka and wisma  :Very Happy:  maybe those longkang guppies evolving into blind cave guppies?  :Idea:

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## budak

Wild guppies show amazing variation in the males. I remember catching swordtails (both lower and upper), lyretails, spear-tails etc... in the longkang adjourning my old home in Johor. There was even one xanthic male which I spent days trying to catch. I wonder how far feral guppies have diverged from the original stock in Trinidad  apart from different environmental and predatory pressures, sexual selection is probably a key factor in the range of colours and finnage expressed by males.

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## stormhawk

Budak, there were several xanthic males that I found. Among the young there were a few of them that were xanthic. I believe they must have come into contact with the aquarium-bred fancy strains.

If I ever come across a pintail (speartail) in the drain, I'll bring it back and do intensive line breeding.  :Laughing: 

They are by far the hardest to find in the drains. I've only found one pintail male and that was about 10 years ago.  :Cool:

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## hwchoy

since guppies are only line bred and not hybridised, all these genes that expresses the various kinds of tails would still be there in the original wild gene pool in Trinidad.

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## whuntley

Guppies hybridize easily with many other Poecelids. Endler's livebearers are just a starting point, but I have seen many wild crosses. Perhaps the most unusual was a helleri cross that was way bigger than any normal guppy, and had the yellow-orange coloring and swordtail. IDK if they were fertile.

It was my understanding that the original genes in the guppy are so fragile that they have frequent mutations. That is where the flowing tails and other impossible (to wild fish) traits arise. I selectively bred a line of lyretails for several years, and was frustrated by my inability to keep mutations from altering the nearly perfect design I was striving for. Just my US$0.02.

Wright

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## hwchoy

> It was my understanding that the original genes in the guppy are so fragile that they have frequent mutations. 
> Wright


mmm you ever heard the BBC radio play _The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy_ ?

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## whuntley

> mmm you ever heard the BBC radio play _The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy_ ?


Naah. I live in the world's deepest valley. Radio only gets here at night, sort of. The local stations are so into country western I feel like I have just stepped in something, every time I tune them in.  :Very Happy: 

Some day, when I get rich, I'll subscribe to a satellite service. Probably still will find little of interest on BBC, though.

Wright

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## hwchoy

aww that's too bad. you wouldn't realise what you just said then.  :Very Happy: 

anyway these days just listen over the Internet.

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## stormhawk

Wright, I just bought some nice young lyretail males from the petshop. Apparently they express all sorts of colouration but the gene for the lyretail is fixed.

The wild ones that I caught had all sorts of patterns, some of which I've not seen in previous populations of guppies that I fished out of the drains. Apparently they must have come into contact with the fancy strains and that would explain why some of the females and males have some cobra and snakeskin patterns plus some with delta tails.

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## TyroneGenade

> It was my understanding that the original genes in the guppy are so fragile that they have frequent mutations.


You are right and wrong (but aren't we all). Let me explain... using human immune globulin genes. A section of the gene, called the hyper variable region (HVR), is able to mutate relatively freely to the rest of the gene (for some odd reason). It is this HVR that recognises bacterial, viral, fungal, pollen etc... proteins and trigger an immune response, but that is beside the point. My my, am I digressing alot today, but back the point.

Certain elements of an organism's DNA are free to mutate and generate more variablity between generations (on the case of human HVR, during one's lifetime). In Guppies, it so happens that it is the genes controling colour and tail shape. This most likely an evolutionary response to intense natural selection in response to predators in a large variation of habitats where different tail shapes and colours would have an advantage.

Because guppies seem to get around (getting flooded down canals), it is important that there be constant variation from one generation to another, even though Natural Selection tends to select for fittest phenotypes, and so excluding unsucessful variants. The evolutionary trick: evolve strategic DNA sequences that can mutate freely!

At least this is my crack-pot reasoning... Still need to think of a test to test this mad hypothesis.

Those guppiess look really nice. Wish I was fishing in a canal in Singapore!

tt4n

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