Yes that thread was nice and cosy before I entered the discussion. But do threads always have to be nice and cosy?
After all, we are here to discuss aspects of herpetoculture and to improve, where necessary and possible. Or am I wrong? I did see a negative aspect of housing (and that was just space and structural richness, nothing more), I felt the need to comment on and I did that.
I do know that US herpers have a tendency to use much smaller enclosures than european ones and though I dislike that, I do accept it to some extent. But seing the geckos in relation to theri enclosures on the pics in this thread made me speak up and will always make me speak up again.
I tried to stay polite, but as I said: This is not my mother tongue and obviosly in german speech, there is a tendency to be more straight and frank than in english speech. I apologize if I sounded or sound rude. That never was my intention. But I did and do want to put my finger on the point. That should not be forbidden.
Sorry, I in fact only run my mouth, when I know, what I am saying and I would be more then glad, If I would be convinced you do the same.
I do not ly, when I say, I studied microbiology in university intensively for four years! My supervisor in that time was Prof. Dr Rudolf Thauer, a microbiologist with a very good reputation and a special interest in the analysis of competitive situations in microbiotic communities.
I learned a lot from him.
I in fact stil dare to say that I do know what I say when it comes to competitive growth of bacteria and I do know what I say when it comes to the real bacterial flora of most semisterile setups.
Because thats what they are: Semisterile.
The benefits of that are marginal if not -and I know that that sounds provocative - exactly the opposite of what you expect.
Also, bacteria taken up from the soil flora by vertebrates can help to prevent the intraintestinal spreading of pathogens.
Not only for that, but in part for that reasons, zoos abandoned their semisterile setups they established in the seventies for many infection sensitive species and replaced it by naturalistic setups.
Semisterile setups are good to use for tratment of diseased animals if they are disinfected daily and if the animal after successful treatment is transferred to another enclosure. Thats for sure, but thats it when it comes to measurable benefits of the seemingly clean surfaces.
I can not repeat it often enough: The presence of a healthy soil microfauna and flora provides a very effective competitive environment which makes it unlikely that any introduced opportunistic pathogen can spread or grow.
Exactly this however can happen very rapidly in invisible or overseen feces smears on seemingly clean artificial surfaces
In Aquaculture, the importance of a competitive environment provided by a rich microbiotic community has been accepted since quite some time and this has triggered several changes awy from semisterile setups, which by now have proven to be very successful.
The same is true for horticulture.
Anyhow, that was not my topic. In fact, I have nothing against semisterile setups and the use of plastic structures in herp cages. This can be very apt. Its easy to control and the animals do not at all care about the material the structures are made of, as long as they fulfill their needs well.
A wall lizard without no doubt can do very well and miss nothing in a stack of old ugly cardboard, if lighting, heat, humifity and space are OK.
A gecko will be perfectly happy in an enclosure filled with lots of plastic pipes. That may not look nice to us, but can full fulfill their need.
That was not my point. My point was that besindes all that, I am convinced that space matters. You can dramatically shrink a geckos territory in comparison to nature if you provide apt structuring, no doubnt. But there IS a border..
For apt keeping of ectotherms, heat, humidity and light irradiation gradients are essential parameters. To provide those, you need a certain minimum of space. Also, you need a certain minimim -can be much much smaller than innature- of space to allow locomotive activity.
And sorry, seeing the geckos in your enclosures and relating their size to their roaming space as depicted in the JPGs, I am fully convinced that that is very much suboptimal.
As a minor point I wanted to stress that the dynamics of microbial flora are less simple than one may think and that while semisterile setups do have certain advantages, naturlistic ones have such advantages as well. And finally, nor private herp setup will ever be sterile. But thats clearly not what irritated me in those setups.
Best
Ingo
You also might be interested in some reading....
Bossier, P., M. Höfte, and W. Verstraete. 1988. Ecological significance of siderophores in soil. Adv. Microb. Ecol. 10:358-414.
Bruno, M. E. C., and T. J. Montville. 1993. Common mechanistic action of bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 59:3003-3010
Maeda, M., and I. C. Liao. 1994. Microbial processes in aquaculture environment and their importance for increasing crustacean production. Jpn. Int. Res. Cent. Agricult. Sci. 28:283-288.
Salminen, S., E. Isolauri, and E. Salminen. 1996. Clinical uses of probiotics for stabilizing the gut mucosal barrier: succesful strains for future challenges. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 70:347-358
Skjermo, J., I. Salvesen, G. Oie, Y. Olsen, and O. Vadstein. 1997. Microbially matured water: a technique for selection of a non-opportunistic bacterial flora in water that may improve performance of marine larvae. Aquacult. Int. 5:13-28
Stavric, S., T. M. Gleeson, B. Blanchfield, and P. Pivnick. 1987. Role of adhering microflora in competitive exclusion of Salmonella from young chicks. J. Food Prot. 50:928-932.
