Multiple stress resistance traits were investigated in the cactophilic fly Drosophila buzzatii. Adults from seven populations derived from North‐Western Argentina were compared with respect to traits relevant for thermal stress resistance and for resistance to other forms of environmental stress. The populations were collected along an altitudinal gradient spanning more than 2000 m in height, showing large climatic differences. The results suggest that knock‐down resistance to heat stress, desiccation resistance and Hsp70 expression at a relatively severe stressful temperature best reflect thermal adaptation in this species. Furthermore, cold resistance seemed to be of less importance than heat resistance, at least for the adult life stage, in these populations. Clinal variation in thermal resistance traits over short geographical distances suggests relatively strong adaptive differentiation of the populations. This study provides the first evidence for altitudinal differentiation in stress‐related traits, and suggests that Hsp70 expression level can be related to altitudinal clines of heat‐stress resistance.

The thermotolerance effect of heat hardening (also called short-term acclimation), knockdown resistance to high temperature (KRHT) with and without heat hardening and chill-coma recovery (CCR) are important phenotypes of thermal adaptation in insects and other organisms. Drosophila melanogaster from Denmark and Australia were previously selected for low and high KRHT, respectively. These flies were crossed to construct recombinant inbred lines (RIL). KRHT was higher in heat-hardened than in nonhardened RIL. We quantify the heat-hardening effect (HHE) as the ratio in KRHT between heat-hardened and nonhardened RIL. Composite interval mapping revealed a more complex genetic architecture for KRHT without heat-hardening than for KRHT in heat-hardened insects. Five quantitative trait loci (QTL) were found for KRHT, but only two of them were significant after heat hardening. KRHT and CCR showed trade-off associations for QTL both in the middle of chromosome 2 and the right arm of chromosome 3, which should be the result of either pleiotropy or linkage. The major QTL on chromosome 2 explained 18% and 27-33% of the phenotypic variance in CCR and KRHT in nonhardened flies, respectively, but its KRHT effects decreased by heat hardening. We discuss candidate loci for each QTL. One HHE-QTL was found in the region of small heat-shock protein genes. However, HHE-QTL explained only a small fraction of the phenotypic variance. Most heat-resistance QTL did not colocalize with CCR-QTL. Large-effect QTL for CCR and KRHT without hardening (basal thermotolerance) were consistent across continents, with apparent transgressive segregation for CCR. HHE (inducible thermotolerance) was not regulated by large-effect QTL.