Galbut Virus Infection Minimally Influences Drosophila melanogaster Fitness Traits in a Strain and Sex-Dependent Manner

ABSTRACT: Galbut virus (family Partitiviridae) infects Drosophila melanogaster and can be transmitted vertically from infected mothers or infected fathers with near perfect efficiency. This form of super-Mendelian inheritance should drive infection to 100% prevalence, and indeed, galbut virus is ubiquitous in wild D. melanogaster populations. However, on average, only about 60% of individual flies are infected. One possible explanation for this is that a subset of flies are resistant to infection. Although galbut virus-infected flies appear healthy, infection may be sufficiently costly to drive selection for resistant hosts, thereby decreasing overall prevalence. To test this hypothesis, we quantified a variety of fitness-related traits in galbut virus-infected flies from two lines from the Drosophi

SUBMITTER: Cross S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9965562 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature