Parallel Evolution of Cold Tolerance within Drosophila melanogaster.

ABSTRACT: Drosophila melanogaster originated in tropical Africa before expanding into strikingly different temperate climates in Eurasia and beyond. Here, we find elevated cold tolerance in three distinct geographic regions: beyond the well-studied non-African case, we show that populations from the highlands of Ethiopia and South Africa have significantly increased cold tolerance as well. We observe greater cold tolerance in outbred versus inbred flies, but only in populations with higher inversion frequencies. Each cold-adapted population shows lower inversion frequencies than a closely-related warm-adapted population, suggesting that inversion frequencies may decrease with altitude in addition to latitude. Using the FST-based "Population Branch Excess" statistic (PBE), we found only limited evide

SUBMITTER: Pool JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5526443 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature