The effect of inbreeding on fluctuating asymmetry of wing veins in two laboratory strains of Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Many authors have proposed that inbreeding destabilizes developmental processes. This destabilization may be reflected by increased fluctuating asymmetry (FA) in inbred compared to relatively outbred populations, but many studies have failed to find such differences. We measured the left and right wings of a large number of individual Drosophila melanogaster from two genetically distinct populations to estimate changes in FA caused by inbreeding. The large sample size and experimental design allowed removal of potentially confounding directional asymmetry (DA) and measurement error terms. Trait means in the two populations were essentially unchanged by inbreeding (less than 0.5% smaller in both populations). Inbred lines showed higher signed FA variances (16 and 38% higher, significantly so in one population) and higher unsigned FA means (3.7 and 13.2%, significantly increased in one population). Significant DA was found in both populations, although the pattern differed between populations. DA did not change due to inbreeding.

The Impact of Copy Number Deletions on General Cognitive Ability and Ventricle Size in Patients with Schizophrenia and Healthy Control Subjects

“…The intensity values (LRR) and beta allele frequency (BAF) for the markers in autosomes were used for CNV detection. The details of CNV detection were described in [19, 30, 31]. Briefly, outlier correction was applied to replace the isolated large LRR values with median ± 2 standard deviation and principal component based correction was performed to eliminate variation induced by experimental or GC (guanine-cytosine) content factors.…”

“…The idea that fluctuating asymmetry partly, even if imperfectly, reflects mutation load is supported by studies linking increased fluctuating asymmetry with factors that increase the number of mutations, such as exposure to radiation [17] or heat [18], and factors that increase their functional impact (inbreeding depression [19]). A recent meta-analysis demonstrated small but reliable associations between aggregate measures of fluctuating asymmetry and intelligence [20].…”

Fluctuating Asymmetry of Human Populations: A Review

“…Inbreeding has been linked to developmental instability in a number of plant [184] and animal [3,109,[185][186][187][188][189] species, though contrary results are common [188,[190][191][192][193][194]. As with mice raised under controlled conditions, inbred bird populations have greater fluctuating asymmetry when there is the additional stress of forest fragmentation [195].…”

Influence of Inbreeding on Female Mate Choice in Two Species of Drosophila

“…The computer overlaid a spline onto the image in order to calculate the distances between intersections of the veins in the wings. This data has been used successfully to quantitatively describe the size and shape of Drosophila wings (Carter et al 2009a, b; Carter and Houle 2011; Pelabon et al 2010). …”