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Slow inbred lines of Drosophila melanogaster express as much inbreeding depression as fast inbred lines under semi-natural conditions

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Abstract

Selection may reduce the deleterious consequences of inbreeding. This may be due to purging of recessive deleterious alleles or balancing selection favouring heterozygote offspring. Such selection is expected to be more efficient at slower compared to at faster rates of inbreeding. In this study we tested the impact of inbreeding and the rate of inbreeding on fitness related traits (egg productivity, egg-to-adult viability, developmental time and behaviour) under cold and benign semi-natural thermal conditions using Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism. We used non-inbred control and slow and fast inbred lines (both with an expected inbreeding level of 0.25). The results show that contrary to expectations the slow inbred lines do not maintain higher average fitness than the fast inbred lines. Furthermore, we found that stressful environmental conditions increased the level of inbreeding depression but the impact of inbreeding rate on the level of inbreeding depression was not affected by the environmental conditions. The results do not support the hypothesis that inbreeding depression is less severe with slow compared to fast rates of inbreeding and illustrate that although selection may be more efficient with slower rates of inbreeding this does not necessary lead to less inbreeding depression.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Doth Andersen, Kamilla S. Pedersen and Karina Mikkelsen for excellent laboratory assistance, three anonymous reviewers and R. A. Krebs for constructive comments to earlier versions of the ms. This work was funded by the Danish Natural Research Council with a Steno stipend to TNK and frame grants to VL.

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  1. Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Aarhus University, Blichers Allé 20, 8830, Tjele, Denmark

    Torsten Nygaard Kristensen

  2. Genetics and Ecology, Department of Biological Sciences, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 114, Building 1540, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Torsten Nygaard Kristensen, Morten Ravn Knudsen & Volker Loeschcke

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  1. Torsten Nygaard Kristensen
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  2. Morten Ravn Knudsen
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Correspondence to Torsten Nygaard Kristensen.

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Kristensen, T.N., Knudsen, M.R. & Loeschcke, V. Slow inbred lines of Drosophila melanogaster express as much inbreeding depression as fast inbred lines under semi-natural conditions. Genetica 139, 441–451 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-011-9563-3

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