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Updated: Jun 1, 2026
Light Sheet-based Fluorescence Microscopy of Living or Fixed and Stained Tribolium castaneum Embryos
Published on: April 28, 2017
Comparative cytogenetics of three species of Dichotomius (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae)
Guilherme Messias da Silva1, Edgar Guimarães Bione, Diogo Cavalcanti Cabral-de-Mello
1Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Departamento de Genética, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, PE Brazil.
Abstract:
Meiotic and mitotic chromosomes of Dichotomius nisus, D. semisquamosus and D. sericeus were analyzed after conventional staining, C-banding and silver nitrate staining. In addition, Dichotomius nisus and D. semisquamosus chromosomes were also analyzed after fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) with an rDNA probe. The species analyzed had an asymmetrical karyotype with 2n = 18 and meta-submetacentric chromosomes. The sex determination mechanism was of the Xy(p) type in D. nisus and D. semisquamosus and of the Xy (r) type in D. sericeus. C-banding revealed the presence of pericentromeric blocks of constitutive heterochromatin (CH) in all the chromosomes of the three species. After silver staining, the nucleolar organizer regions (NORs) were located in autosomes of D. semisquamosus and D. sericeus and in the sexual bivalent of D. nisus. FISH with an rDNA probe confirmed NORs location in D. semisquamosus and in D. nisus. Our results suggest that chromosome inversions and fusions occurred during the evolution of the group.
