Time travelling weevils

Museum specimens are of increasing importance to the study of ecology, evolution, phylogenetics and conservation biology. In my thesis I explored the use of museum specimens to analyse population changes and declines in the endangered weevil genus Hadramphus over the past 125 years (Fountain 2012). I optimized a DNA extraction method of pinned museum insects that causes no morphological damage to the specimen. Also, I used a reduced representation library on a next generation sequencing platform to target SNPs for population genetics.

What is the fate of Hadramphus? Find the begining of an answer in this first article: Fountain et al. 2013. And stay tuned for more upcoming manuscripts.