Molecular Work Almost Finished

We have worked through most of our pillbug samples, extracting DNA and doing PCR for CO1 mitochondrial haplotypes and SRDs through 4 primer sets. It has been a lot of work on a school schedule but we are almost there, with Washington state the remaining group and some redo samples for failed extractions or PCRs.

One interesting surprise was the lack of any Wolbachia in our Hawaiian samples. We evaluated almost 50 pillbugs from one location on the big island and had no positives for Wolbachia or the f-element.

I will adjust the timeline a bit since we hope to have all of the molecular work finished by March and then spent time looking at the data. So far we have done ~250 pillbugs and 1500 PCR reactions, sequencing all CO1 and those positive for Wolbachia and/or f-element!