For the first time ever, a team led by the University of
Colorado Boulder has sequenced the internal bacterial makeup of the three major
life stages of a butterfly species, a project that showed some surprising
events occur during metamorphosis.
The team, led by CU-Boulder doctoral student Tobin Hammer,
used powerful DNA sequencing methods to characterize bacterial communities
inhabiting caterpillars, pupae and adults of Heliconius erato, commonly known
as the red postman butterfly. The red postman is an abundant tropical butterfly
found in Central and South America.