suggestion on preserving larvae?

[James J. Kruse]

On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Soowon Cho wrote:

> Dear members,
> 
> Does anyone have a good suggestion on preserving larvae for both
> internal anatomy and DNA work?

Hi Soowon, and others interested in this:

I have had good luck sequencing larvae of tortricids by extracting DNA
from the heads of larvae preserved in EtOH (a razor blade will work if you
don't have a sword handy).

I recommended this procedure to a labmate, and he tried it using the heads
of frozen saturniid larvae with equally good success. If you only have one
example or need to use the same specimen for morphological study, you
could use half of the head. Gut contents really mess up the sequence, if
you are able to get any at all, so be careful.

Regards,
Jim Kruse
University of California at Berkeley
Dept. of Environ Sci, Policy and Mgmt.
Div. of Insect Biology
201 Wellman Hall
Berkeley, California, 94720-3112
Voice: (510) 642-7410    Fax: (510) 642-7428
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/sperlinglab/kruse.html