In Breeding

[Steveo]

I don't know how herp breeders do it, but in a past life I bred show fish and always outcrossed every third generation. The San Frans are a special case in that getting fresh, wild blood is impossible. The breeder should have an idea about who has some distantly-related lines... I would hope communication is pretty tight in that group.

[chris-uk]

I don't know how herp breeders do it, but in a past life I bred show fish and always outcrossed every third generation. The San Frans are a special case in that getting fresh, wild blood is impossible. The breeder should have an idea about who has some distantly-related lines... I would hope communication is pretty tight in that group.

I'm not convinced that communication is good enough that most breeders could confidently say "my lines are unrelated to Bob's lines for at least x generations". Unfortunately it would seem that even if the breeders provide paperwork with their babies, the paperwork tells you who the parents are but if you want to know more than that you'd need the breeder to go looking up more information in their records.
It is for that reason that my male San Francisco Garter will probably never breed. I got the San Fran because it was the first species both me and the wife said we wanted after we got the checkered girls, so when the opportunity arose I decided to buy one. However, after researching more about the European San Fran lines I'd quickly decided that I'd rather breed infernalis than tetrataenia, so I'm happy just to keep a tetrataenia for the term of its natural life and not even consider breeding it.