Drosophila americana Diapausing Females Show Features Typical of Young Flies

Diapause is a period of arrested development which is controlled physiologically, preprogrammed environmentally and characterized by metabolic depression that can occur during any stage of insect development. Nevertheless, in the genus Drosophila, diapause is almost always associated with the cessat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-09, Vol.10 (9), p.e0138758-e0138758
Main Authors: Reis, Micael, Valer, Felipe B, Vieira, Cristina P, Vieira, Jorge
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actins - genetics
Animals
Cold
Culex pipiens
Developmental stages
Diapause
Drosophila
Drosophila - genetics
Drosophila - growth & development
Drosophila - physiology
Drosophila americana
Drosophila melanogaster
Drosophila virilis
Environmental conditions
Female
Females
Gene Expression
Genes
Genetic aspects
Geography
Insects
Life span
Metabolic depression
Metabolism
Metamorphosis, Biological
Phylogenetics
Physiological aspects
Senescence
Sophophora
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Summary:Diapause is a period of arrested development which is controlled physiologically, preprogrammed environmentally and characterized by metabolic depression that can occur during any stage of insect development. Nevertheless, in the genus Drosophila, diapause is almost always associated with the cessation of ovarian development and reproductive activity in adult females. In this work, we show that, in D. americana (a temperate species of the virilis group), diapause is a genetically determined delay in ovarian development that is triggered by temperature and/or photoperiod. Moreover, we show that in this species diapause incidence increases with latitude, ranging from 13% in the southernmost to 91% in the northernmost range of the distribution. When exposed to diapause inducing conditions, both diapausing and non-diapausing females show a 10% increase in lifespan, that is further increased by 18.6% in diapausing females, although senescence is far from being negligible.ActinD1 expression levels suggest that diapausing females are biologically much younger than their chronological age, and that the fly as a whole, rather than the ovarian developmental one, which is phenotypically more evident, is delayed by diapause. Therefore, diapause candidate genes that show expression levels that are compatible with flies younger than their chronological age may not necessarily play a role in reproductive diapause and in adaptation to seasonally varying environmental conditions [corrected].
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0138758