The effects of adaptation to urea on feeding rates and growth in Drosophila larvae

A collection of forty populations were used to study the phenotypic adaptation of Drosophila melanogaster larvae to urea laced food. A long-term goal of this research is to map genes responsible for these phenotypes. This mapping requires large numbers of populations. Thus, we studied fifteen populations subjected to direct selection for urea tolerance and five controls. In addition, we studied another twenty populations which had not been exposed to urea but were subjected to stress or demographic selection. In this study we describe the differentiation in these population for six phenotypes: (1) larval feeding rates, (2) larval viability in urea laced food, (3) larval development time in urea laced food, (4) adult starvation times, (5) adult desiccation times and (6) larval growth rates. No significant differences were observed for desiccation resistance. The demographically/stress selected populations had longer times to starvation than urea selected populations. The urea adapted pop...本研究选取40个果蝇种群，用以探究黑腹果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）幼虫对添加尿素食物的表型适应机制。本研究的长期目标为定位与这些表型相关的功能基因。此类基因定位需要大量实验种群，因此我们选取了15个经尿素耐受性直接选择的种群以及5个对照种群进行研究。此外，我们还研究了另外20个未接触过尿素，但经历过胁迫选择或种群统计选择的种群。本研究针对6类表型分析了上述种群间的分化差异：(1) 幼虫取食速率；(2) 幼虫在添加尿素食物中的存活率；(3) 幼虫在添加尿素食物中的发育时长；(4) 成虫耐饥饿时长；(5) 成虫耐干燥时长；(6) 幼虫生长速率。未检测到与耐干燥抗性相关的显著差异。经种群统计/胁迫选择的种群，其耐饥饿时长显著长于经尿素选择的种群。经尿素适应的种群……