Academic Uses of the PcQG Lab

Studying Precis coenia Wing Color Patterns

You may freely use the PcQG Lab, or the images it accesses, for research purposes. We ask only that you credit and cite the publication which describes the original experiment:
    Paulsen, S. M. Quantitative Genetics of the Wing Color Pattern in the Buckeye Butterfly (Precis coenia and Precis evarete): Evidence Against the Constancy of G. Evolution, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Aug., 1996), pp. 1585-1597.
Please also send a brief note to Susan Paulsen at
paulsen@cs.unc.edu

Hacking the System

You can use the PcQG Lab to measure distances on other organisms. (The program will, however, stubbornly insist on making two measurements on each image.) All you need are the image files and to follow our file naming conventions. Assuming you used the default installation path, the wing images are located in "C:\Program Files\Precis coenia Quantitative Genetics Lab\lab_materials\specimen\images\." Pick one of the subfolders, say "dorsFore," and replace the dorsal forewing images with your own image files. You must, however, rename your files to follow our naming convention!

xxxxx[off|par]_[mal|fem]<seq>_[d|v][f|h].[ext]
where
  • xxxxx is a family id (letters or numbers)
  • [off|par] is either off or parent, indicating whether the image is of a parent or offspring.
  • [mal|fem] is either mal or fem, indicating whether the image is of a male or female.
  • <seq> is a number, identifying a particular offspring (relevent for future versions, you can just use any number).
  • [d|v] stands for dorsal or ventral, if you've placed your images in the folder "dorsFore," your filename must use "d."
  • [f|h] stands for forewing or hindwing, if you've placed your images in "dorsFore," you must use "f."
  • [ext] is the image file extension, typically jpg.

If you follow all of these conventions, you'll be able to correctly output your measurements on the parent offspring pairs.

The PcQG Lab can also be used to just make simple distance measurements on images. You can arbitrarily (but uniquely) name your image files to follow the above conventions and then reinterpret the output csv file accordingly.

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