<i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> pigmentation demonstrates adaptive phenotypic parallelism over multiple spatiotemporal scales.

ABSTRACT: Populations are capable of responding to environmental change over ecological timescales via adaptive tracking. However, the translation from patterns of allele frequency change to rapid adaptation of complex traits remains unresolved. We used abdominal pigmentation in Drosophila melanogaster as a model phenotype to address the nature, genetic architecture, and repeatability of rapid adaptation in the field. We show that D. melanogaster pigmentation evolves as a highly parallel and deterministic response to shared environmental variation across latitude and season in natural North American populations. We then experimentally evolved replicate, genetically diverse fly populations in field mesocosms to remove any confounding effects of demography and/or cryptic structure that m

SUBMITTER: Berardi S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12448190 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature