Carotenoid Extractions Might Even Work

I spent part of the day today re-reading how to extract and measure carotenoids, for the purpose of directly measuring the physical display of male scarlet shiners (as suggested by Brady Porter). Carotenoids have historically been of interest to plant and fungal biologists more than animal biologists. The comprehensive discussion of the chemistry and handling of carotenoids is in a compilation for plant biochemists entitled Chemistry and Biochemistry of Plant Pigments, Vol. 2. Carotenoids can be extracted by soaking the tissue of interest in absolute ethanol; then, the trick is to concentrate the hydrophobic pigments in petroleum ether which is nasty stuff to handle. But I think it could work and yield interesting information. One student I know wants to do a Special Topics/Research class this fall; now I have to figure out if she's up to this kind of biochemistry.

I also finished assembling the readings for my Vertebrate Reproduction class. Instead of a textbook I have 29 readings in .pdf format, and several photocopied chapters from various books. It won't surprise most of you to know that I'm using fish as a model organism for vertebrate reproduction, since they have the same basic processes and functions as the tetrapods. I'll especially be talking about various aspects of sexual selection using guppies as a primary study organism, since there's a surprisingly large literature on the subject. My end unit is on naked mole-rats, the only known eusocial mammal. Their social structure is more like honeybees than typical mammals. They're so weird by our standards that talking about them serves a useful purpose.