The relationship between morphology and flight in Drosophila: a study of two pairs of sibling species from a natural population.

FLAIBANI, N.; ORTIZ, V.E.; FANARA, J.J.; CARREIRA, V. P.

INSECT SCIENCE

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2023

1672-9609

Insectflight is a complex trait involved in different behaviours, from the search forsexual partners, food, or breeding sites. Many studies have postulated theadaptive advantages of certain morphological traits in relation to increasedflight capacity, such as low values of wing loading or high values ofwing:thorax ratio and wing-aspect ratio. However, few studies have evaluatedthe relationship between variables related to flight and morphological traitsin Drosophila. This work aimed to study morphological traits in males andfemales of two pairs of sibling species: Drosophila buzzatii Patterson andWheeler-Drosophila koeferae Fontdevila and Wasserman, and Drosophila melanogasterMeigen-Drosophila simulans Sturtevant, and to analyse its relationship withflight. We detected the highest proportion of flight time in D. koepferae andD. simulans compared to D. buzzatii and D. melanogaster, respectively. Ourresults also revealed sexual dimorphism, with males exhibiting a higherproportion of flight time than females. Surprisingly, we did not find a generalpattern to explain the relationship between morphology and the proportion of flighttime because associations varied depending upon the analyses (considering allgroups together or each sex-species combination separately). Moreover, theseassociations explained a low percentage of variation, suggesting that othernon-morphological components related to flight, such as physiologicalvariables, should be taken into account. This work allowed us to show thevariability and complexity of an aspect of flight, suggesting that the adaptiverole of the morphological traits studied might have been overestimated