Study of some factors maintaining the ‘atrophie gonadique’ character in experimental populations of Drosophila melanogaster

✍ Scribed by G. Periquet

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 478 KB
• Volume: 51
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-6707
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00139495

✦ Synopsis

Analysis of the penetrance of the 'atrophie gonadique' (ag) character for over 14 years both in natural and experimental populations has enabled us to determine the role of some of the factors maintaining this polymorphism. This report shows that in the Ma 65 base strain, the frequency of (ag) did not change significantly over 70 generations. In the 8 lines selected for high (ag) frequency the results show that the (ag) frequency decreased for 25-30 generations after release of selection and tends to return to the base population frequency.

The role of temperature on penetrance of (ag) was investigated. Results from the study of seven selected lines over 30 generations at 20" and 25°C show that the (ag) character is maintained more easily at 20°C than at 25°C. The physiological effect of temperature on individuals also implies an effect on the adaptive values.

Finally, the influence of nutritional conditions was studied by submitting three populations extracted from the Ma 65 base stock to three different nutritional media. The results show an excess of (ag) individuals in competitive conditions in both sexes and at both 25" and 28°C. The interaction of these data with previous results are discussed in order to establish a quantitative model of the (ag) polymorphism _