Pool-GWAS of reproductive dormancy in Drosophila simulans. Pool-GWAS_dormancy_Dsimulans

Genetic adaptations facilitating survival have been of long-standing interest to evolutionary biologists. Dormancy is a well-studied adaptation to facilitate overwintering and has often been considered to have a polygenic basis due to its complex nature. In Drosophila, dormancy is studied as a state of suppressed oogenesis in the ovaries. Although few studies have dived into the genetics of dormancy in Drosophila melanogaster species complex, a genome-wide scan for the genetic basis of this ecologically extremely important trait has not been done. We screened a South African D. simulans population for dormancy incidence at two temperature regimes (10°C and 12°C, LD 10:14) and performed a Pool-GWAS to identify the genetic variation that contributes to the syndrome’s expression in this population. We sequenced pools of isofemale lines that are either dormant or non-dormant at both temperatures and identified many polymorphic positions, which is in accord with the expected polygenic nature of the trait. We further searched for structural polymorphisms, but failed to associate them to the expression of dormancy.