Genetic basis of adaptative developmental traits in Drosophila melanogaster: phenotypic variation and plasticity in natural-derived populations

PETINO ZAPPALA M. A.; V. E. ORTIZ; I. SATORRE; J. MENSCH; CARREIRA, V. P.; J. J. FANARA

Carolina del Norte

Congreso; Evolution 2014; 2014

Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN)

The study of the genetic basis of phenotypic variation in natural populations is critical to understand the mechanisms and processes involved in adaptation. Here we show results addressed to analyze the genetic variability, phenotypic plasticity and environmental sensitivity for developmental adaptive traits in D. melanogaster. We utilized isogenic lines derived from two nearby natural populations of Argentina located at different altitude as well as isogenic lines of the Drosophila Reference Genome Panel derived from Raleigh (NC) that was considered also as a lowland population. Larval and pupal Developmental Times (DTs) were estimated in individuals reared at different temperature (25ºC and 17ºC) to investigate developmental plasticity whereas the robustness was calculated by means of their environmental variability. Larval and pupal DT exhibited a particular variation pattern for each population that differs between these developmental stages suggesting a decoupling between larval and pupal DT. Since these results are consistent with previous observations, where lines derived from different populations and mutagenized lines were analyzed, we considered larval and pupal DT as different traits. These two traits presented significant genetic variation among populations as well as differences in their robustness although the levels of plasticity were similar among them. We observed that the populations differ in their DT and that differences are temperature specific. In fact, lines from lowland population of Argentina showed higher DTs when larvae were reared at 17º whereas at 25ºC the highest DT correspond to lines derived from the highland population. Our results indicate that these developmental traits showed specific temperature-populations dynamics. We will perform GWAS in these lines to compare the genetic basis of phenotypic adaptive developmental traits variation among all three populations and associate these variations with ecological diversity.