Egg viability, mating frequency and male mating ability evolve in populations of Drosophila melanogaster selected for resistance to cold shock

Background: Ability to resist temperature shock is an important component of fitness of insects and other ectotherms. Increased resistance to temperature shock is known to affect life-history traits. Temperature shock is also known to affect reproductive traits such as mating ability and viability of gametes. Therefore selection for increased temperature shock resistance can affect the evolution of reproductive traits. Methods: We selected replicate populations of Drosophila melanogaster for resistance to cold shock. We then investigated the evolution of reproductive behavior along with other components of fitness- larval survivorship, adult mortality, fecundity, egg viability in these populations. Results: We found that larval survivorship, adult mortality and fecundity post cold shock were not significantly different between selected and control populations. However, compared to the control populations, the selected populations laid significantly higher percentage of fertile eggs (eg...