Meeting Abstract

S10-2.2  Monday, Jan. 7  Deep transcriptome insights into cave beetle eyes FRIEDRICH, M.; Wayne State University friedrichwsu@gmail.com

The small carrion beetle genus Ptomaphagus diversified into more than 50 species, which range from ancestral surface dwellers to facultative and obligatory cave inhabitants in the Southeast of the United States. One of the best-studied representatives is the troglobite Ptomaphagus hirtus, which is endemic to the cave system of Mammoth Cave National Park. P. hirtus adults are characterized by complete reduction of the hind wings and near complete reduction of the compound eye to a small lens patch. In his survey of North American cave animals, Packard (1888) was unable to detect photoreceptors or optic neuropils in sections of the adult head of P. hirtus, which led him to conclude that P. hirtus lacks visual senses. This assessment, however, is in conflict with the induction of lens cell specification in the developing insect compound eye. The recent deep sequencing of the transcriptome of the adult P. hirtus head recovered orthologs of a large number of sensory, structural and regulatory vision-related genes. I will discuss how these data inform us about the organization of the visual system in P. hirtus and other microphthalmic cave arthropods.