F1, F2, P Generations Count Problems

08/02/2020

In the breeder's Latin, often not clear abbreviations are used and vivid discussions are lead what is F1 and true F1 etc etc.

Let us first define the field and the terminology of abbreviations:

The filed, in which we are using these terms is population biology, breeding programmes and genetics.

The terms and abbreviations used are:

P - GENERATION
Meaning: Parental, ancestral generation, generation of parents, it means of specific one male and one female building the beginning, the starting reference point and the point 0 of counting generations

F1, F2, F3 - GENERATION
Meaning: Filial (first, second etc) generation, means generation of direct descendants, kids, offspring in direct line

WC
Meaning: Wild-Caught, means obtained from the wild populations and brought into captivity, means of unclear genetic origin, unknown wild parents and ancestors, with or without specifically or broadly defined location of origin

CB
Meaning: Captive Bread, means born in captivity from either pairing of wild-caught or any other parents but not just hatched from eggs obtained from the wild

CH
Meaning: Captive Hatched, means obtained in captivity as a result of incubating eggs, obtained either in the wild or laid by a wild-caught female without mating in captivity

FB, FH
Meaning: Farm-Bread, Farm-Hatched, referring to special situation when farms raising chameleons are located in their country of origin and analogous in meaning to CB and CH. Farms located out of country of origin with same or similar climatic conditions are considered to belong to captivity.

........

Often, the confusion comes through the unanswered question whether you do want to define the term in general or in any specific situation, this is why we never come to a concrete conclusion...

In general, F1 is the first generation offspring after the P- (parental) generation, that you define as the start of your counting. There is no rule what you need to take. You just start with P as 0 (zero) and then count filial generations F1, F2, F3,....

In our specific situation, as F1 is usually considered the first CAPTIVE generation, means, the first generation of young being born in Captivity either from WC (wild-caught) parents, or from CH (captive-hatched) parents (which are technically still the wild blood).

So, the way out is very simple.
If you want to use F1 in the latter definition, say not F1 only, say CAPTIVE F1.

If you want to indicate a beginning of a specific breeding line, regardless what combination of parents' origin you take (same or different, CB, WC, CH, FB, FH and any combination and any CAPTIVE Fx generation), you must indicate from
Which PARENTAL generation (which exact male and female) you started counting.

Author: Petr Nečas
My projects:   ARCHAIUS   │   CHAMELEONS.INFO