Use of meiotic pachytene stage of spermatocytes for karyotypic studies in insects

Coleopterans represent by far the largest animal group, with more than 300,000 identified species. Only little progress in their chromosome analysis has been accomplished during recent decades, compared with that made in vertebrate cytogenetics. Both the small size of their genome and the difficulty of obtaining mitotic cells with nice chromosomes have limited the application of conventional techniques, such as chromosome banding. A method for obtaining chromosome banding on well-spread bivalents from the pachytene stage of the meiotic prophase, the most frequent stage in young imagines, is described. It makes possible the identification of all bivalents and the establishment of the karyotype with greater ease and accuracy than with mitotic cells. In addition, it gives some insight into chromosome organization at a stage when autosomes are assumed to undergo an intense transcriptional activity. The results of the technique, which was successfully applied to many species, are described here in two of them, Cetonia aurata and Adesmia montana as examples.