| dc.description.abstract | The stored product pest, the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum), has emerged as a novel and powerful model organism over the last decade. Because these are stored product pests, the lab environment is similar to field conditions, and therefore, loss of genetic variation as the beetle strains adapt to lab conditions is minimized. Additionally, this species is an important pest with extensive impacts on US and worldwide agriculture. There is an extensive collection of mutant strains made from lab populations, but current research lacks a community genetic resource that consists of wild populations. The goal of this research is to identify phenotypically visible mutations linked to specific chromosomes and introgress these mutations into the genome of wild-type populations. The efficiency of the introgression will then be quantified through whole-genome sequencing. The genomic resources developed in this project will be publicly available and will accelerate the pace of research in labs around the world that use these species. | |
