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Direct And Correlated Effects Of Selection On Flight After Exposure To Thermal Stress In Drosophila Melanogaster, Robert A. Krebs, Kimberly A. Thompson

Biological, Geological, and Environmental Faculty Publications

To demonstrate how insects may adapt to ecologically relevant levels of heat stress, we performed artificial selection on the ability of Drosophila melanogaster to fly after an exposure to a high but non-lethal thermal stress. Both tolerance and intolerance to heat stress arose very quickly, as only a few generations of selection were necessary to cause significant separation between high and low lines for heat tolerance. Estimates of heritability based on the lines artificially selected for increased flight ability ranged from 0.024 to 0.052, while estimates of heritability based on the lines selected for the inability to fly after heat …