The New mtDNA Sequencing Crusade

I talked with Kris today and we toted up where we stand with his project of assessing Fundulus heteroclitus population structure using the mitochondrial cyt-b gene. We have six sequences from Charleston, SC; one from Virginia Beach; two from Chincoteague, VA; four from Falmouth, MA; and one from Nantucket, MA. A good framework but not enough to make a solid analysis. So we're going to re-do some of the PCRs (DNA amplification) of samples I still have and get them sequenced through a different vendor. We'll re-do samples from Boston Harbor, Chincoteague, Nantucket, and Virginia Beach. I also re-discovered two high-quality extractions I did in 1996 from two fish from Marion, MA, on Buzzards Bay. In particular we need northern sequences, and those would certainly qualify. What we've found to date is consistent with my hypothesis that Nantucket fish will be different from mainland populations as the result of Nantucket's isolation due to rising sea levels 8,000 years ago. But, of course, more data equal more confidence. So that's our mission. I hope to do the first PCR next Wednesday.

Jennifer is sending an e-mail to Trevor Pitcher in Ontario asking for his methods for analyzing color intensity in male guppies in a recent publication. His article is one of the inspirations for our work with male scarlet shiners, but getting the software to tell us precisely what we want to know is confusing. So if you know Trevor, remind him to tell us what he did.

Tomorrow my small class for telescope shiner work will hopefully start their first histological preparations. We'll rendezvous with Rachel at 3 and get the basic rundown, and I'll have the students work with some scarlet shiners left over from the gill parasite project.