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Heliconius Homepage

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After our recent successful Consortium meeting in Harvard, I though I would post some information about the history of these meetings. Robert Srygley organized the First International Heliconius Congress, as a symposium under the auspices of the Association of Tropical Biology. The ATB meetings in 2000 were held together with the SSB/SSE/ASN Meetings at Bloomington, Indiana. Thanks to Jim Mallet for digging out the schedule:
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June 27, Tuesday Morning
ATB symposium (Organizer R.B. Srygley, University of Oxford)
Coevolution and Speciation in Passion-Vine Butterflies
Opening remarks: Bob Srygley
1. Systematics and co-evolution. Andy Brower, Oregon State University.
2. Mimicry and speciation. Jim Mallet, University College London.
3. Co-evolution of mimetic behavior. Bob Srygley, University of Oxford.
4. Wing-pattern evolution. Owen McMillan, University of Puerto Rico.
5. Evolution of Host-Plant Specialization. Helene Engler, University of Texas.
6. The three butterfly problem: divergent selection and Muellerian
mimicry Durrell Kapan, University of Texas.
Closing remarks: Bob Srygley
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The next meeting was a two-day event in Panama held on 3-4th August 2002, organised by myself and Robert Srygley. Here are a couple of the group photos and the programme (thanks to Larry Gilbert for the photos).

Heliconius_congress_2002
Heliconius_congress_2002b

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Field trip to Pipeline Road – Robert Reed, Larry Gilbert and Chris Jiggins

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The father figures – Keith Brown and Larry Gilbert
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The next meeting was in 2004 in Puerto Rico, organised by Owen McMillan. I dont have a schedule of the talks, but here is a schedule of events and a receipt, just so you can see the conference logo.
ConferenceSchedule1.0

Receipt

I have been working with Heliconius butterflies since 1993, when I started my PhD with Jim Mallet in University College London. The original PhD advert is posted here. My original interests were in the ecology of tropical insects, and during my PhD work I studied a hybrid zone in Ecuador between two incipient species (Heliconius himera and H. erato). I did a little bit of population genetics during my PhD using allozyme loci, which now seems like a very antiquated technique. After a brief respite as a conservation biologist in Ecuador, I then continued with a Postdoc position with Jim, during which I worked mainly in Panama. This led us to the discovery that Heliconius melpomene and H. cydno use wing patterns as cues during mating, leading to reproductive isolation - an example of an ecological traits that contributes to assortative mating and a phenomenon that is now commonly termed a 'magic trait'. In collaboration with Owen McMillan I began to work on the genetic basis of wing patterns in about 2001, conducting crossing experiments in Panama with races of H. melpomene. Over the subsequent years this led to the cloning and identification of wing pattern genes such as optix - a large collaborative effort involving many researchers from across the community. Currently my group works on many aspects of Heliconius evolutionary biology, including evolutionary developmental biology of wing patterning, the genetic and behavioural basis for speciation, the sensory ecology of mimicry and analysis of the Heliconius melpomene genome. For more details see my lab homepage.  Recent publications [zotpress author="Jiggins" style="apa" sortby="date" order=desc limit="5"]

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