Been following this post and has been very interesting, educational, and I might say entertaining. The whole discussion on green sunfish has been a kick. Not so hard on Mr. Robinson folks. I think all of us get a little sloppy when we discuss what kind of offspring result from hybrids. I mean any biologist or statistician would be the first to say that a hybrid BG's offspring can never be a pure green sunfish or BG. I don't think anyone here means that when they talk about fish reverting, including the fisheries guy from Mississippi. I'm not a genetics expert but I do understood probability and the concept of dominant and recessive genetics. Mr. Lusk did a great job of explaining how this works but I can add something to his confetti analogy that I think will help explain what people have seen when they see hybrid offspring that look like green sunfish. Instead of confetti imagine you have a bag full of M&Ms. You cross a green sunfish and a bluegill. Let's say the bluegill represents black and blue M&M's. The sunfish represents green and yellow M&M's. The first generation hybrid cross may have equal amounts of black, blue, green, and yellow M&M's. In subsequent generations some of the bags will inevitably have almost all green and yellow M&M's with only a couple of black and blue ones. No future generation will ever have zero black and blue M&M's because those genes were in the parents and just get covered up by dominant genes. But some bags have almost all green and yellow with only one or two black and blue ones. Now you melt the whole bag of M&M's. What's happened to the black and blue ones? There still there, you just can't see them in the mess. Is this a pure bag of green and yellow M&M's? No, the couple of black and blue ones are still there you just can't see them. I maintain that what Mr. Robinson has seen in subesquent generations of HBG are fish that look and act just like green sunfish. Are they pure green sunnies? No. The bluegill lineage is mixed in there somewhere but has gotten so diluted you can't see it. So come on you all, eighth generation GG's are no longer GG. Sorry Deb but to say so is a mind game unless GG is a new species. All offspring will have some random mix of genes from both parents with characteristics that depend on the combination of genes they ended up with. Many will no doubt be very different from the original stock. That's where the bad traits show up. And if there is any green sunfish in the mix some offspring will look just like green sunfish even though they technically aren't. When we say hybrids have "reverted" we're just a little sloppy with terminology. If you want to know if any GG offspring can look and act like green sunnies then I say the question to ask Deb is whether there is any green sunfish in the mix. The secret formula will not be compromised just by admitting that one part of the recipe is green sunfish. And this would clear up the whole issue. I think anyone who buys GG deserves to know if they will some day "revert" go green sunfish. If there is green sunfish in the lineage then anyone who says they "revert" to green sunfish may not be technically correct but they are correct in saying some of the kids will look just like green sunnies. No one will be able to tell they aren't without a DNA or some kind of chromosome analysis. I'm not trying to pick on GG, in fact I'd still love to get some one day but if we are all interested in truth I think we need to at least know if there are GSF in the mix.
