Tuesday, May 19, 7:30 pm – Swallowtails: A Kaleidoscope of Natural and Laboratory Hybrids Online Lecture
The May meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club will take place Tuesday, May 19 at 7:30 pm on Zoom. Click HERE to join meeting – password nabakov.
Closely related species are prone to hybridization. The effect of natural hybrids on the evolutionary trajectory of parental species is manifold. On the other hand, laboratory hybrids are useful genetic techniques to study the divergence between incipient species. Historically, swallowtail butterflies are among the best studied insects in terms of both natural and lab hybrids, and are continuing to present challenging problems in insect speciation. In this talk, Tianzhu Xiong will present his recent study on the hybridization within the Asian peacock swallowtails. Specifically, 1) natural hybrids: the debatable relationship between Papilio syfanius and Papilio maackii near a zone of environmental shift; 2) laboratory hybrids: genetic incompatibilities within the Papilio bianor species complex.
Tianzhu Xiong is a 4th year graduate student from the Mallet Lab at Harvard Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and is the current president of the Cambridge Entomological Club. His research interests are theoretical population genetics and divergence in swallowtail butterflies from the oriental region.
