10.5061/DRYAD.1H188
Kawecki, Tadeusz J.
University of Lausanne
Vijendravarma, Roshan Kumar
University of Lausanne
Data from: Epistasis and maternal effects in experimental adaptation to
chronic nutritional stress in Drosophila
Dryad
dataset
2013
maternal effects
Epistasis
2013-08-28T18:33:43Z
2013-08-28T18:33:43Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12248
12559 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Based on ecological and metabolic arguments some authors predict that
adaptation to novel, harsh environments should involve alleles showing
negative (diminishing return) epistasis and/or that it should be mediated
in part by evolution of maternal effects. While the first prediction has
been supported in microbes, there has been little experimental support for
either prediction in multicellular eukaryotes. Here we use a line-cross
design to study the genetic architecture of adaptation to chronic larval
malnutrition in a population of Drosophila melanogaster which evolved on
an extremely nutrient-poor larval food for 84 generations. We assayed
three fitness-related traits (developmental rate, adult female weight and
egg-to-adult viability) under the malnutrition conditions in 14 crosses
between this selected population and a non-adapted control population
originally derived from the same base population. All traits showed a
pattern of negative epistasis between alleles improving performance under
malnutrition. Furthermore, evolutionary changes in maternal traits
accounted for half of the 68 % increase in viability and for the whole of
8 % reduction in adult female body weight in the selected population
(relative to unselected controls). These results thus support both of the
above predictions and point to the importance of non-additive effects in
adaptive microevolution.
Trait ( viability, developmental rate and adult body weight) means for 14
crossesThis data was collected in our laboratory using one control and one
selected population of D. melanogaster that was experimentaly evolved for
increased adaptation to chronic larval malnutrition. We use Line-cross
analysis to determine the genetic architecture of three traits; Egg to
adult viability, developmental rate and adult dry weight. The data were
collected as described in the materials and methods section of the
paper.GA data.xlsx