In our lab we use the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum) as our model system.  However, we also use several other closely related species as well.  A while back I snapped some shots of some of these related species.  Just for good measure I also included T. castaneum.  Once I was cleaning the photos up I realized the T. castaneum I picked was actually a mutant called  pearl.  This mutation causes the eye to lack pigmentation.  You can see this best in the lateral shot.  I went back and used a wild type individual for the ventral shot so you can also see what the eyes normally look like.  If you need a high res picture of one of these species just let me know these are sized down to work on blogger.











I have included T. brevicornis in this grouping even though it should be noted that this is actually only distantly related to tribolium.  Molecular analysis places it confidently outside of the rest of the tribolium species.  Eventually it will probably be moved out of the genus tribolium.

Cheers and Happy New Year
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Labels: photos tribolium brevicornis tribolium castaneum tribolium confusum tribolium freemani
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I am broadly interested in the application and development of comparative methods to better understand genome evolution at all scales from nucleotides to chromosomes.
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