Non-additive effects between genotypes: Implications for competitive fitness assays.

ABSTRACT: Competitive fitness assays are widely used in evolutionary biology and typically rely on a reference strain to compare different focal genotypes. This approach implicitly relies on the absence of interaction between the competing genotypes. In other words, the performance of the reference strain must not depend on the competitor. This report scrutinized this assumption by competing diverged Drosophila simulans populations against a common reference strain. We detected strong evidence for interaction between the competing genotypes: (1) Frequency-dependent selection was common with opposite effects in genetically diverged populations. (2) Temporal heterogeneity of fitness estimates, which can be partially attributed to a competitor-specific delay in the eclosion of the reference stra

SUBMITTER: Xiao C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10630047 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature