A quantitative genetic study of starvation resistance at different geographic scales in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Food shortage is a stress factor that commonly affects organisms in nature. Resistance to food shortage or starvation resistance (SR) is a complex quantitative trait with direct implications on fitness. However, surveys of natural genetic variation in SR at different geographic scales are scarce. Here, we have measured variation in SR in sets of lines derived from nine natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster collected in western Argentina. Our study shows that within population variation explained a larger proportion of overall phenotypic variance (80%) than among populations (72%). We also noticed that an important fraction of variation was sex-specific. Overall females were more resistant to starvation than males; however, the magnitude of the sexual dimorphism (SD) in SR varied among lines and explained a significant fraction of phenotypic variance in all populations. Estimates of cross-sex genetic correlations suggest that the genetic architecture of SR is only partially shared between sexes in the populations examined, thus, facilitating further evolution of the SD.