Intergenerational paternal effect of adult density inDrosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Notwithstanding recent evidences, paternal environment is thought to be a potential but unlikely source of fitness variation that can affect trait evolution. Here we studied intergenerational effects of males’ exposure to varying adult density in Drosophila melanogasterlaboratory populations. We held sires at normal (N), medium (M) and high (H) adult densities for 2 days before allowing them to mate with virgin females. This treatment did not introduce selection through differential mortality. Further, we randomly paired males and females and allowed a single round of mating between the sires and the dams. We then collected eggs from the dams and measured the egg size. Finally, we investigated the effect of the paternal treatment on juvenile and adult (male) fitness components. We found a significant treatment effect on juvenile competitive ability where the progeny sired by the H‐males had higher competitive ability. Since we did not find the treatment to affect egg size, this effect is unlikely to be mediated through variation in female provisioning. Male fitness components were also found to have a significant treatment effect: M‐sons had lower dry weight at eclosion, higher mating latency, and lower competitive mating success. While being the first study to show both adaptive and non‐adaptive effect of the paternal density in Drosophila, our results highlight the importance of considering paternal environment as important source of fitness variation.

Ant Collective Behavior Is Heritable and Shaped by Selection

“…For example, researchers used lab-based manipulations to test predictions of density-dependent selection theory in Drosophila melanogaster (e.g. Mueller 1997;Dasgupta et al 2019). Our study provides some of the first evidence that natural selection can shape collective phenotypes, an assumption that is rarely tested, on a scale that is likely not feasible in a field study.…”

Paternal condition affects offspring reproduction and life history in a sex-specific manner inDrosophila melanogaster

“…Paternal effects have been reported in a diversity of taxa, including arthropods (Adler and Bonduriansky 2013;Polak et al 2017;Zajitschek et al 2017;Gasparini et al 2018;Gilad and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/evolut/advance-article/doi/10.1093/evolut/qpac051/6887807 by guest on 16 December 2022 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t Scharf 2019), mammals (García-Palomares et al 2009;Ng et al 2010;Bromfield et al 2014;Dias and Ressler 2014;Mashoodh et al 2018), fish (Evans et al 2017) or tunicates (Crean et al 2013), as well as in plants (Galloway 2000(Galloway , 2001. These effects have been induced by manipulation of paternal diet quality (Bonduriansky and Head 2007), social environment (Crean et al 2013) or both (Adler and Bonduriansky 2013), population density (Dasgupta et al 2019), or temperature (Huey et al 1995). While these reports have clearly advanced our understanding of paternal effects in general, less is known about how different offspring traits vary in their response, both in daughters and sons.…”

Increasing adult density compromises anti-bacterial defense in Drosophila melanogaster

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that housing Drosophila melanogaster adults in different group sizes can produce varied physiological responses. For example, under laboratory conditions, Drosophila melanogaster adults housed at different group sizes exhibit correlated changes in life history (Nandy et al 2016; Leech et al 2017) and sexually selected (Bretman et al 2010, 2011; Nandy and Prasad 2011) traits, with effects extending into the next generation (Dasgupta et al 2016, 2019). Flies subjected to crowding early in adult life have reduced lifespan (Graves and Meuller 1993; Joshi et al 1998) and altered age-independent mortality rate (Joshi and Meuller 1998).…”

“…Many insect populations in the wild go through major cycles of population fluctuations making insects a relevant study system for such questions. Habitat destruction and climate change induced changes in insect population densities make the matter more relevant not just to scientists with entomological interests but also to public in general (Wagner et Nandy and Prasad 2011) traits, with effects extending into the next generation (Dasgupta et al 2016(Dasgupta et al , 2019. Flies subjected to crowding early in adult life have reduced lifespan (Graves and Meuller 1993;Joshi et al 1998) and altered age-independent mortality rate (Joshi and Meuller 1998).…”