[HELICONIUS] W-linked markers -- sexing young stages of Heliconius

[James Mallet]

It's easy to tell apart the sexes of pupae of most Leps with a bit of 
practice via morphology and a hand lens, so you don't need genetics 
or to sample destructively.

For Heliconius pupae, there's a nice diagram showing sexual 
differences of ?Heliconius erato in one of Jocelyn Crane's papers -- 
would anyone like to put it on the web? I haven't got Crane's papers 
here, but I think it's probably in this one:

Beebe, W., J. Crane, and H. Fleming. 1960. A comparison of eggs, 
larvae and pupae in fourteen species of Heliconiine butterflies from 
Trinidad, W.I. Zoologica, New York 45:111-153.

I understand it's also possible to tell apart larvae of some 
Lepidoptera, but I don't think anyone has checked carefully in 
Heliconius. In small transparent-cuticled leps like tortricids it's 
possible to see the dark coloured testes  through the cuticle in 
quite young larvae. Igor Emelianov and I used this in Zeiraphera 
diniana. (Testes are also dark in Heliconius adults -- not yellow or 
white as suggested by Alexie for I presume other taxa).

Ilik Saccheri claims (pers. comm.) that you can take small amounts of 
haemolymph from Biston pupae without killing them.

Good luck, Jim


>On Wed, 2010-04-14 at 11:57 +0100, Jamie Walters wrote:
>>Hello all,
>>
>>I'm curious to know if anyone has had any success (or informative
>>failures...?) with developing W-linked markers for Heliconius (or any
>>butterfly that would be near enough to be useful).
>>
>>Or, alternatively, if anyone has any particularly clever ideas for
>>mining the existing genome data for candidate regions I'd be keen to
>>hear them.
>>
>>I'm simply interested in being able to sex juveniles and pupae.
>>
>>
>>Thanks very much,
>>
>>Jamie
>>
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________________________________

James Mallet
UCL
www.ucl.ac.uk/taxome/jim

Helen Putnam Fellow 2009-2010
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Harvard University
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