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Rejection of the beneficial acclimation hypothesis (BAH) for short term heat acclimation in Drosophila nepalensis

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Abstract

Beneficial acclimation hypothesis (BAH) is the phenotypic plasticity in response to changing environments which enables organisms to enhance their fitness. In recent years, however, BAH has received vigorous criticism and is still debatable. In this study, we tested thermal hardiness phenotypes (melanization, chill coma recovery, heat knockdown and percentage survival) on adult and pre-adult stages of Drosophila nepalensis, reared in different thermal environments (14, 17, 21 and 25 °C) to check whether increasing natural surrounding temperature and acclimation limit towards environmental change is detrimental or beneficial. Results showed that rearing D. nepalensis at higher temperatures (21 and 25 °C) reduces its melanization and cold hardiness but improves heat knockdown times. When temperature was raised to 26.2 °C (0.6 °C above the upper thermal maxima), to determine the short-term acclimation effects, survival and fitness of adults diminished approximately 1.5 to 2 folds. These results suggest that D. nepalensis has long-term developmental acclimation to both heat and cold which would be extremely beneficial as temperatures and climates alter in the region due to global warming. However, a lack of short-term heat acclimation suggests that rapid shifts in thermal extreme could be detrimental to D. nepalensis.

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Acknowledgements

SR is grateful to the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi for the financial support through the SP/YO/775/2018G project and DS is grateful to Council of Scientific & Industrial Research for the financial support through 09/1260(0001)/2019-EMR-I.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Center for Research and Development, Chandigarh University, Gharuan, Mohali, 140413, India

    Seema Ramniwas & Divya Singh

  2. Genomics and Bioinformatics Cluster, Department of Biology, University of Central Florida, 4110 Libra Drive, Orlando, FL, 32816, USA

    Girish Kumar

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  1. Seema Ramniwas
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  2. Girish Kumar
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Correspondence to Seema Ramniwas or Divya Singh.

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Ramniwas, S., Kumar, G. & Singh, D. Rejection of the beneficial acclimation hypothesis (BAH) for short term heat acclimation in Drosophila nepalensis. Genetica 148, 173–182 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-020-00100-8

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