Robustness of flight performance - Supplemental materials

A central challenge of quantitative genetics is partitioning phenotypic variation into genetic and non-genetic components. These non-genetic components are usually interpreted as environmental effects; however, variation between genetically identical individuals in a common environment can still exhibit phenotypic variation. A trait's resistance to variation is called robustness, though the genetics underlying it are poorly understood. Accordingly, we performed an association study on a previously studied, whole organism trait: robustness for flight performance. Using 197 of the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP) lines, we surveyed variation across single nucleotide polymorphisms, whole genes, and epistatic interactions to find genetic modifiers robustness for flight performance. There was an abundance of genes involved in the development of sensory organs and processing of external stimuli, supporting previous work that processing proprioceptive cues is important for affecting variation in flight performance. Additionally, we tested insertional mutants for their effect on robustness using candidate genes found to modify flight performance. These results suggest several genes involved in modulating a trait mean are also important for affecting trait variance, or robustness, as well.