Who's your baby? DNA fingerprinting wild insects

Cricket tissue samples for DNA fingerprinting

The key to our project is being able to count the number of offspring that each individual leaves in the next generation.  We do this by taking a tiny DNA sample (we now use a very small drop of blood).  We then look for differenes of a single letter of the genetic code from hundreds of sites throughout the animal's DNA.  This gives each individual a unique fingerprint which allows us to identify their offspring in the next generation of crickets, so we can build a pedigree of the entire population.

Sampling blood; no harm is done to the cricket