Heliconius Homepage

Second HGC Meeting

Chris Jiggins — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:35:41 +0000

The second meeting of the Heliconius Genome Consortium will be held on 25-26th March 2010 in St Johns College Cambridge.

Accommodation will be available at around £43 per night from Weds 24th until Friday inclusive. The meeting will be held either in St Johns or in the Zoology Department – not decided yet.

Travel and meeting costs will be supported by the BBSRC.

Heliconius hecale melicerta

Chris Jiggins — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:53:16 +0000

Heliconius hecale melicerta, from Gamboa area, Panama

Roosting erato

Chris Jiggins — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:39:05 +0000

Heliconius erato petiverana roosting gregariously in the insectary in Gamboa

Gregarious roost

Chris Jiggins — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:38:28 +0000

Heliconius erato petiverana roosting gregariously.

Hanging from one another

Chris Jiggins — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:28:35 +0000

A Heliconius erato petiverana female roosting, hanging from the wings of another. Note the characteristic roosting posture of females (both individuals here are female), with their hindwings covering the forewing band.

Roosting erato 2

Chris Jiggins — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:17:11 +0000

Heliconius erato petiverana roosing gregariously in the insectary in Gamboa. Individuals coming in to roost spend several minutes ‘fanning’ the butterflies already hanging up, often dislodging them from the perch. The reason for this social behaviour is not really well understood.

Genome data now up to 11x

Chris Jiggins — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:16:32 +0000

We now have 11x coverage of the H. melpomene genome, all in 454 shotgun sequence reads. A preliminary assembly gives average contig size of 2662bp, and N50 ContigSize of 8207bp. So a bit of a way to go until we have a full assembly, but good progress. If anyone out there is interested in having a look at the data with a mind to contributing to its assembly/annotation or for whatever purpose, please let me know.

Artificial feeders

Chris Jiggins — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:53:02 +0000

Normally, a natural background is nice, but artificial feeders are quite colourful…. Heliconius erato erato

Laying on biflora

Chris Jiggins — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:27:25 +0000

Heliconius erato petiverana laying an egg on P. biflora.

Heliconius ismenius courting 2

Chris Jiggins — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:32:25 +0000

Another photo of this persistent H. ismenius male. The female is raising her abdomen up, which is probably a rejection behaviour – at least it certainly prevents the male from getting to her abdomen from the side, and also probably releases pheromones from scent glands in the female’s abdomen (which may be anti-aphrodisiac).