The relationship between morphology and flight in Drosophila: a first approach to its genetic basis

Flight is a crucial activity for winged insects, involving diverse behaviors, and wing morphology has often been proposed as a key factor influencing flight capacity. Traits such as wing loading, wing:ratio, and wing aspect ratio have been suggested as targets of natural selection, exhibiting environmental and genetic variability. Here, we evaluate the relationship between morphological traits and two aspects of flight performance: flight duration (PTF) and its robustness (CVPTF) in Drosophila melanogaster. Additionally, we included wing conformation (i.e., wing shape without the component explained by size), using geometric morphometrics. We analyzed whether variation of flight capacity can be attributed to morphological variation, employing 53 lines of Drosophila melanogaster whose genome is fully sequenced. , For the morphological analysis, 10-20  flies of each sex per line were randomly selected. Wings and thoraxes were dissected and mounted in a standardized way, then photographed using a binocular microscope. Morphological traits were measured from these images using tpsDig. For wing traits, 15 landmarks were placed on the ventral side of the left wing. Wing shape was estimated using the Morpho package, allowing shape to be decomposed into size and conformation components. 
The images were used to obtain also the following lineal measurements: thorax length (TL, the distance between the anterior margin of the thorax and the tip of the scutellum), total wing length (TWL, the distance between landmarks 6 and 13; Figure S1), and wing width (WW, the distance between landmarks 12 and 15; Figure S1). Then, we estimated the compound traits wing loading (WLD), wing:thorax ratio (WTR), and wing aspect ratio (WAS): WLD as (TL)3/(WAR), WTR as WAR/TL , and WAS as TWL/WW. Additionally, for e..., # Data from: The relationship between morphology and flight in Drosophila: a first approach to its genetic basis

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.h18931zzz](10.5061/dryad.h18931zzz)

## Description of the data and file structure

The 53 DGRP lines used in this study were obtained from the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center and were randomly chosen. For each line, 100 sexually mature couples were released into an egg-collecting chamber (a plastic container of 15 x 10 x 4 cm) containing a Petri dish with egg-laying medium (2% agar in distilled water and baker’s yeast). Eggs were allowed to hatch, and batches of 30 first-instar larvae were transferred to culture vials containing 5 mL of lab medium. Larvae were raised at 25±1°C and 60–70% humidity with a 12:12 light:dark photoperiod until adult emergence. For each line, we generated ten replicates (vials), with five randomly assigned to morphological measurements and the other five to flight-capacity estimates.

**Morphological measurements**
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