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Shifting clinal patterns of stress resistance traits in Drosophila ananassae

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Abstract

Drosophila ananassae, a desiccation and cold sensitive species, is abundant along the latitudinal gradient of the Indian subcontinent. Analysis of seasonally varying wild-caught flies showed two independent patterns of melanisation: (1) narrow to broad melanic stripes on three anterior abdominal segments only; (2) a novel body color pattern (dark vs. light background). We investigated the degree to which these two melanisation systems vary; first with latitude and secondly among seasons. There is a shallow latitudinal cline for percent striped melanisation as well as for frequency of body color alleles during the rainy season. The frequencies of body color alleles vary significantly across seasons in the northern populations i.e. the light allele occur abundantly (>0.94) during the rainy season while the frequency of the dark allele increases (0.22–0.35) during the dry season causing steeper clines during the dry season. By contrast, the low variations in abdominal stripes showed non-significant changes and the cline was similar across seasons. Furthermore, both types of melanisation patterns showed no plasticity with respect to temperature. The present study also investigated clines related to desiccation, heat and cold stress in D. ananassae females across seasons (rainy and dry) from nine latitudinal populations. The clines for stress related traits changes to steeper and non-linear during the dry season. Thus, latitudinal populations of D. ananassae differ in slope values of clines for stress related traits across seasons. This study reports seasonal changes in latitudinal clines of stress resistance traits as seen in a changing frequency of body color alleles of D. ananassae in northern locality, while in southern localities it remains constant. This is presumably the result of only minor seasonal changes in humidity and temperature in the South, whereas in the North seasonal climatic variability is much higher.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the reviewers, the Associate Editor Karl Gotthard and the Editor-In-Chief John A. Endler for constructive comments on this work. Jyoti Chahal is thankful to Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi for Senior Research Fellowship.

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  1. Department of Genetics, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, 124001, India

    Jyoti Chahal & Kapil Dev

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  1. Jyoti Chahal
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  2. Kapil Dev
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Correspondence to Jyoti Chahal.

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Chahal, J., Dev, K. Shifting clinal patterns of stress resistance traits in Drosophila ananassae . Evol Ecol 27, 333–351 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-012-9599-6

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