In reality, captive population's gene frequencies don't last
There is a problem with the whole idea that long term maintainance of a gene pool is possible in captivity. To illustrate. In 1990 I had 12 jungle collected (collected before 1988 rules change) besseae. Today only 4 of them are still alive. So I have 4 remaining snapshots of the "original" besseae gene pool. I consider this a 75% failure to meet the challenge of preserving the wild gene pool diversity. My sample population has lost 75% of its alleles. For you long time growers, how many jungle collected plants do you still have alive? Answer honestly, most will be forced to admit that very few of these plants survive the long haul. You don't have to answer here, but I would be surprised if many did significantly better than I have.
This example is an illustration to the false argument that a gene pool can be preserved in captivity. Reality is, none of you are consistient enough growers out there to guarrantee that any plant (each plant being a unique snapshot of the wild gene distribution) will survive in captivity for any significant length of time. And for you newbies, don't chime in "well some botanic garden or some other institution with experts should do it". Institutions have horrible track records when it comes to long term species preservations. Just ask Russ Vernon about the Wheeler Collection of Cattleya species at Ball State University. Not one plant survives from the Wheeler Collection, even though Ball State still has the money endowed to keep them going. We on this forum ARE the experts. And we can not keep a gene pool stable over the long haul.
It is absolutely critical that species be preserved in the wild. The gene frequencies change over time in captivity. Now I did do my duty, I provided the initial batch of seed pods to AnTec and they provided the lab skills, so AnTec was able to release about 300 or so flasks of besseae to the public in 1994-1995 which help meet the market demand so that today you can get blooming besseae for less than $50. Terry Root's first generation of besseae hit the market just before Antec, so there was a perfect storm of besseae availability, wich allowed the prices to drop from $300 to $25 for seedlings. Most of the besseae available today are 3rd and 4th generation from a founding stock of not much more than 60 individuals. Most are OZ stock, the remaiders are from mine and AnTec's stock. There are others, HP Norton, Hans Burkhart and a couple others, the each worked with only a handful of plants. The genetic diversity of the 10,000's of collected besseae plants is lost forever. The vast majority of those collected plants are dead.
So please, let's not justify our need to aquire with the false claim we are "preserving a gene pool", it just ain't true. Now when we mass produce seedlings from a sample captive population we do lower collecting preasure on the wild ones, which is good for ex situ preservation. But let us not confuse this activity with saving genetic diversity. Diversity can really only be preserved by large intact wild populations.
My 2 cents
Leo
