Effects of Inbreeding on Early Female Starvation Resistance in Drosophila melanogaster
Christina A. Anz, Pauline P. Ngo , James T. Tran, Emilie Y. Endow, Leomar Q. Bagsik, Terilyn C. Aquino,
Masara A. Issa, Chantelle Lee, Samantha Quesada
Mentor: Michael Rose
The goal of this project was to evaluate the impact of effective population size on female starvation resistance
in hybridized Drosophila melanogaster populations. The D. melanogaster experimental populations were derived
from B/IV lines that were created during long-term studies of experimental evolution in the Rose laboratory.
The effect of effective population size with respect to hybridization was tested in order to assess whether
there was a signal for hybrid vigor, defined as an increase in fitness characteristics shown by hybridized F1
populations that allow them to phenotypically outperform their parents. This study addressed the following
questions: (1) Does hybridization influence starvation resistance in small Ne populations? (2) Is there
differentiation in starvation resistance between small and large Ne populations in purebred populations versus
hybrids? (3) How does large-population hybridization influence starvation resistance? The results indicated
that hybridization did not show an apparent significance in either population size, small or large. Although
the starvation resistance is on average higher in hybrid populations with respect to the parental populations,
there were no statistically significant differences between the two types. Further studies with higher levels of
replication will allow for a stronger signal of hybrid superiority to appear.