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Adaptive strategies in natural populations of Drosophila

Ethanol tolerance, desiccation resistance, and development times in climatically optimal and extreme environments

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Summary

Adult tolerance of ethanol vapour in a closed system containing 12% ethanol in solution, decreases in a cline from southern to northern Australia. However a Darwin population is more tolerant than predicted from its latitude. Ethanol tolerance races in Australia have almost certainly evolved within the last 100–150 years, because of resource unavailability prior to that time. Within populations, variation among isofemale strains is lowest in the climatically extreme southern Melbourne (37°S) and northern Darwin and Melville I. (11–12°S) populations. This suggests low resource diversity within extreme populations compared with the climatically less extreme Brisbane (28°S) and especially Townsville (19°S) populations. For desiccation resistance, the population rankings are: Darwin Melbourne > Townsville > Brisbane Melville I. and for development time, rankings are similar: Darwin Melbourne < Townsville < Brisbane Melville I.

Therefore resource utilization heterogeneity is greatest in populations not greatly stressed by desiccation and where development times are extended. In total therefore, the utilization of a diversity of resources is a feature of populations tending somewhat towards a K-strategy; this is emphasized by the relative heterogeneity among isofemale strains of these populations for desiccation resistance and to a lesser extent development times.

The D. melanogaster gene pool can be viewed as made up of climate-associated races. Since the ethanol tolerances of adjacent (and climatically similar) Darwin and Melville I. are very different, resource utilization races may occur within climatic races. Such a mosaic of resource utilization races are more likely in climatically extreme than in optimal habitats.

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  1. Australian Drosophila Research Unit, Department of Genetics and Human Variation, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia

    P. A. Parsons

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Communicated by R.C. Lewontin

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Parsons, P.A. Adaptive strategies in natural populations of Drosophila . Theoret. Appl. Genetics 57, 257–266 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00264952

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