Spontaneous mutational genotype-environment interaction for fitness-related traits in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Spontaneous mutations were allowed to accumulate for 104-161 generations in 113-176 inbred lines, independently maintained by a single brother-sister mating per generation, all of them derived from a completely homozygous population of Drosophila melanogaster. In each of two to three consecutive generations, all lines were scored for fecundity, egg-to-pupa and pupa-to-adult viabilities, both in the standard laboratory culture medium (ST) and in three harsh media differing from the former by a single factor: higher temperature (HT), higher NaCl concentration (HSC), or a much reduced concentration of nutrients (D). Relative to the standard medium, productivity (fecundity X viability) decreased by 25% (HT), 66% (HSC), and 80% (D). In each medium, mutational variances of those traits and mutational covariances between all possible pairs were calculated from the between-line divergence (codivergence). Mutational correlations between character states in different media were also obtained. Because we used inbred lines, those estimates were mainly due to the accumulation of mildly detrimental mutations, deleterious mutations of large effect being underrepresented. For all traits, mutational heritabilities ranged from 1.41 x 10-4 to 11.24 x 10-4, and did not increase with intensified environmental harshness. Mutational correlations between character states in different media were usually not large (average absolute value 0.31), reflecting a high degree of environmental specificity of the mutations involved. In our results, mutations quasi-neutral in ST conditions and mildly detrimental in more stressful media were not, as a class, important. Mutational correlations between fecundity and egg-to-pupa viability were small and positive in all media. Those involving pupa-to-adult viability were positive in HT, nonsignificant in HSC, and negative in ST and D, showing how the genetic covariance structure of quantitative traits in populations may change in variable environments.