Sex-Specific Responses of Life Span and Fitness to Variation in Developmental Versus Adult Diets in Drosophila melanogaster.

ABSTRACT: Nutritional variation across the lifetime can have significant and sex-specific impacts on fitness. Using Drosophila melanogaster, we measured these impacts by testing the effects on life span and reproductive success of high or low yeast content in developmental versus adult diets, separately for each sex. We tested two hypotheses: that dietary mismatches between development and adulthood are costly and that any such costs are sex-specific. Overall, the results revealed the rich and complex responses of each sex to dietary variation across the lifetime. Contrary to the first hypothesis, dietary mismatches between developmental and adult life stages were not universally costly. Where costs of nutritional variation across the life course did occur, they were sex-, context-, and trait-specif

SUBMITTER: Duxbury EML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7357588 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature