[HELICONIUS] Artificial Diet for Heliconius

[Carol Boggs]

Hi all, 

Back in the day, I explored development of an artificial diet for Heliconius, loosely based on diets for Colias and other butterflies. What stopped me was that in practice it took so much dried Passiflora leaf that I might as well have been feeding the larvae on living Passiflora. 

Nonetheless, I'd like to talk w/ Chip to see what he's thinking, and could potentially contribute a small amount to the endeavor. Having a controlled larval diet would certainly help resource allocation studies as well. 

Also, for those interested, Francie Chew & students have developed a Pieris larval diet that works well. 

Carol 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Chris Jiggins" <c.jiggins at zoo.cam.ac.uk> 
To: heliconius at ucl.ac.uk 
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 10:01:25 AM 
Subject: [HELICONIUS] Artificial Diet for Heliconius 

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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