[HELICONIUS] Artificial Diet for Heliconius

[Chris Jiggins]

Dear all

We have just been in conversation with Chip Taylor at Kansas State University, regarding the possibility of developing an artificial diet for Heliconius.  After talking about the success of his rearing protocol for monarchs, I am convinced that this has the potential to represent a major change in what we can do with Heliconius as a genetic and developmental system.  He has offered to work on developing a similar diet for Heliconiines - either with H. charithonia or Agraulis, and estimates that this might take 5-6 months.  In order to do this he is asking for some financial support to cover student stipends and consumables.  This would be initially $5000 USD, although the ultimate cost depends somewhat on how successful the initial experiments are.

I intend to contribute some funds to try and make this happen, but since this has the potential to benefit all of us I wonder if any other members of the community are interested to also contribute.  If it were shared across 4-5 labs the cost would really be minimal.

Let me know if you are interested

Cheers
Chris

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Chris Jiggins
Reader in Evolution and Biological Diversity
Department of Zoology
University of Cambridge
Tel: (+44)(0)1223 769021
http://www.heliconius.org/
http://heliconius.zoo.cam.ac.uk/

Fellow of St John's College, 
Cambridge, UK. CB2 1TP
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