A note from Joseph Rossano:

As an artist, I strive to distill ideas, concepts, and reality into their bare essence.  My resulting minimalist sculptures, I hope, convey an emotion, ask a question, or direct the viewer on a path of introspection and investigation, as they explore man's impact on the environment.  My series "BOLD" is named for the acronym for the Barcode of Life Data Systems database. The subject of each specimen box is neither real nor is it an accurate representation of the creature it is designed to represent; rather, it is a jeweled representation of reality that draws the viewer in for a closer inspection.  What is the story of this specimen?  What is the text on the side of the piece?  What is a DNA barcode?  Read on for answers to these and other questions.

About Pierella helvetia - by Daniel H. Janzen

Ghosting along the forest floor of the deep shady ACG, Pierella helvetia is one of the few large ACG butterflies that can be reliably encountered on a non-rainy day by walking a rain forest trail slowly and observantly for hours.  Perched motionlessly, wings closed on the fallen and dark rotting leaves, this butterfly is close to invisible.  The bright red of the upperside of the hind wings is not displayed until the butterfly launches into fast darting flight among the leafless plant bases sticking up out of the litter, and then perches again, the red “tracking patch” having abruptly disappeared.  Additionally, the large false eye spot on the upper corner of the hind wing upperside is matched by a yet more well-defined false eye spot on the underside.  Somewhat cryptic at a distance, but quite convincing close up, this pattern is evolutionarily designed to give the butterfly a few seconds head start in its flight from a startled potential predator.

Today P. helvetia is placed in the large family Nymphalidae, but for the past century or more it would have been placed in the Satyriidae, today a Satyriinae subfamily of Nymphalidae. In the lowland tropics, satyrines, as their name implies, are basically brown and soft-winged forest shady understory species with quick and often interrupted flight and very often having false eyes on the wings. Though many extra-tropical species have the same flight pattern, there are also many satyrines of meadows, field edges and other more insolated circumstances.  Throughout, whether large or small, the caterpillars feed on monocots – grasses, sedges, palms – and even some yet more primitive primitive plants.  None eat the leaves of broad-leafed plants, the angiosperms.  P. helvetia is no exception, with its finely brown-and-gray-mottled caterpillar feeding on the leaves of understory Calathea (Marantaceae) and Heliconia (Heliconiaceae).  There is even one rearing record from a sedge (Cyperaceae). The caterpillar usually feeds at night, hiding motionless during the day low down on the stem or even in the litter at the base of the food plant.  In ACG, P. helvetia is the rainforest Pierella while the similar but red-patch-lacking Pierella luna occupies the interface between dry forest and rain forest, its caterpillar feeding on the same food plants and behaving the same way.

If you look closely at the side of the encasement on this work of art, you’ll see a series of A’s, C’s, G’s and T’s.  They make up a DNA sequence, but not just any sequence – it’s a sequence unique to this species.  Each species has a different sequence at this particular spot in their DNA code.  Scientists call this sequence fragment a “DNA barcode”.  If each part of the sequence were represented by a different colour, it might look like:

What is a DNA barcode?

DNA barcoding uses a small fragment of a single gene in an organism’s DNA to identify the species to which that organism belongs, much like one might use a UPC barcode to distinguish different products.  These powerful tools are helping scientists to catalogue the world’s biodiversity.  The process began in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, and scientists here – like collaborator Dr. Paul Hebert of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (see below) – continue to lead international work aiming to catalogue the earth’s life forms completely.

More information:
• View a video of Dr. Dan Janzen discussing DNA Barcoding.    
• Learn more about using DNA barcoding to advance the discovery and identification of butterflies, moths, and skippers (i.e. Lepidoptera).       
• Learn about the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) project, an Ontario-led worldwide effort to use DNA barcoding to identify all the species in the world.  

For more information, click on these links of interest:

The art of Joseph Rossano
•    Joseph Rossano’s official site

DNA barcoding
•    Barcode of Life Data Systems
•    Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding
•    International Barcode of Life (iBOL)

Biodiversity and conservation
•    Area Conservacion de Guanacaste (Costa Rica)

Data and images from the ACG caterpillar rearing inventory
•    Joe Rossano barcoded butterflies in Fusion Tables
•    Other ACG barcoded butterflies in Fusion Table blog
•    Janzen and Hallwachs caterpillar inventory database

Please reference:  A tropical horde of counterfeit predator eyes  Daniel H. Janzen, Winnie Hallwachs, and John M. Burns PNAS | June 29, 2010 | vol. 107 | no. 26. Also see:  Remarkable Creatures:  Insects The Can't Beat Them Scare Them