Sharon E. Mitchell

Symposium: New Technologies for the Taxonomic Identification of Arthropods: Use of DNA Probes to Distinguish Sibling Species of the Anopheles Quadrimaculatus Complex

Isozyme electrophoresis has traditionally been the method of choice for analyzing the genetic structure of populations. It can also be useful for distinguishing morphologically identical sibling species. More recently mitochondrial DNA restriction analysis has become popular as an alternative for studying population structure; and the isolation of species-specific DNA probes has become the method of choice for distinguishing closely related species. We have evaluated the usefulness of these DNA based techniques in mosquitoes and discuss their advantages and disadvantages.

Chromosome-linkage group correlation in Anopheles quadrimaculatus (Say)

Brown body (bw) is a recessive, autosomal mutant in Anopheles quadrimaculatus (Say). Independent linkage was noted between stripe (st+) and bw, and an epistatic interaction was noted for the altered expression of st+ in bw homozygotes. Reciprocal autosomal translocations and a Y-autosome translocation were used to assign bw to the left arm of chromosome 2 and st+ to the right arm of chromosome 3.