Selection for greater dispersal in early life increases rate of age-dependent decline in locomotor activity and shortens lifespan.

Locomotor activity is one of the major traits that is affected by age. Greater locomotor activity is also known to evolve in the course of dispersal evolution. However, the impact of dispersal evolution on the functional senescence of locomotor activity is largely unknown. We addressed this knowledge gap using large outbred populations of Drosophila melanogaster selected for increased dispersal. We tracked locomotor activity of these flies at regular intervals until a late age. The longevity of these flies was also recorded. We found that locomotor activity declines with age in general. However interestingly, the activity level of dispersal-selected populations never drops below the ancestry-matched controls, despite the rate of age-dependent decline in activity of the dispersal-selected populations being greater than their respective controls. The dispersal-selected population was also found to have a shorter lifespan as compared to its control, a potential cost of elevated level of activity throughout their life. These results are crucial in the context of invasion biology as contemporary climate change, habitat degradation, and destruction provide congenial conditions for dispersal evolution. Such controlled and tractable studies investigating the ageing pattern of important functional traits are important in the field of biogerontology as well.

Desiccation Stress Acts as Cause as well as Cost of Dispersal in Drosophila melanogaster.

AbstractEnvironmental stress is one of the important causes of biological dispersal. At the same time, the process of dispersal itself can incur and/or increase susceptibility to stress for the dispersing individuals. Therefore, in principle, stress can serve as both a cause and a cost of dispersal. We studied these potentially contrasting roles of a key environmental stress (desiccation) using Drosophila melanogaster. By modulating water and rest availability, we asked whether (a) dispersers are individuals that are more susceptible to desiccation stress, (b) dispersers pay a cost in terms of reduced resistance to desiccation stress, (c) dispersal evolution alters the desiccation cost of dispersal, and (d) females pay a reproductive cost of dispersal. We found that desiccation was a clear cause of dispersal in both sexes, as both male and female dispersal propensity increased with increasing duration of desiccation. However, the desiccation cost of dispersal was male biased, a trend unaffected by dispersal evolution. Instead, females paid a fecundity cost of dispersal. We discuss the complex relationship between desiccation and dispersal, which can lead to both positive and negative associations. Furthermore, the sex differences highlighted here may translate into differences in movement patterns, thereby giving rise to sex-biased dispersal patterns.

Mate-finding dispersal reduces local mate limitation and sex bias in dispersal.

Sex-biased dispersal (SBD) often skews the local sex ratio in a population. This can result in a shortage of mates for individuals of the less-dispersive sex. Such mate limitation can lead to Allee effects in populations that are small or undergoing range expansion, consequently affecting their survival, growth, stability and invasion speed. Theory predicts that mate shortage can lead to either an increase or a decrease in the dispersal of the less-dispersive sex. However, neither of these predictions have been empirically validated. To investigate how SBD-induced mate limitation affects dispersal of the less-dispersive sex, we used Drosophila melanogaster populations with varying dispersal propensities. To rule out any mate-independent density effects, we examined the behavioural plasticity of dispersal in the presence of mates as well as same-sex individuals with differential dispersal capabilities. In the presence of high-dispersive mates, the dispersal of both male and female individuals was significantly increased. However, the magnitude of this increase was much larger in males than in females, indicating that the former shows greater mate-finding dispersal. Moreover, the dispersal of either sex did not change when dispersing alongside high- or low-dispersive individuals of the same sex. This suggested that the observed plasticity in dispersal was indeed due to mate-finding dispersal, and not mate-independent density effects. Strong mate-finding dispersal can diminish the magnitude of sex bias in dispersal. This can modulate the evolutionary processes that shape range expansions and invasions, depending on the population size. In small populations, mate-finding dispersal can ameliorate Allee effects. However, in large populations, it can dilute the effects of spatial sorting.

Complex interaction of resource availability, life-history and demography determines the dynamics and stability of stage-structured populations.

The dynamics of stage-structured populations facing stage-specific variability in resource availability and/or demographic factors like unequal sex-ratios, remains poorly understood. We addressed these issues using a stage-structured individual-based model that incorporates life-history parameters common to many holometabolous insects. The model was calibrated using time series data from a 49-generation experiment on laboratory populations of Drosophila melanogaster, subjected to four different combinations of larval and adult nutritional levels. The model was able to capture multiple qualitative and quantitative aspects of the empirical time series across three independent studies. We then simulated the model to explore the interaction of various life-history parameters and nutritional levels in determining population stability. In all nutritional regimes, constancy stability of the populations was reduced upon increasing egg-hatchability, critical mass, and proportion of body resource allocated to female fecundity. However, the effects of increasing sensitivity of female-fecundity to adult density on constancy stability varied across nutrition regimes. The effects of unequal sex-ratio and sex-specific culling were greatly influenced by fecundity but not by levels of juvenile nutrition. Finally, we investigated the implications of some of these insights on the efficiency of the widely-used pest control method, the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT). We show that increasing the amount of juvenile food had no effects on SIT efficiency when the density-independent fecundity is low, but reduces SIT efficiency when the density-independent fecundity is high.

A comparison of six methods for stabilizing population dynamics.

Over the last two decades, several methods have been proposed for stabilizing the dynamics of biological populations. However, these methods have typically been evaluated using different population dynamics models and in the context of very different concepts of stability, which makes it difficult to compare their relative efficiencies. Moreover, since the dynamics of populations are dependent on the life-history of the species and its environment, it is conceivable that the stabilizing effects of control methods would also be affected by such factors, a complication that has typically not been investigated. In this study, we compare six different control methods with respect to their efficiency at inducing a common level of enhancement (defined as 50% increase) for two kinds of stability (constancy and persistence) under four different life-history/environment combinations. Since these methods have been analytically studied elsewhere, we concentrate on an intuitive understanding of realistic simulations incorporating noise, extinction probability and lattice effect. We show that for these six methods, even when the magnitude of stabilization attained is the same, other aspects of the dynamics like population size distribution can be very different. Consequently, correlated aspects of stability, like the amount of persistence for a given degree of constancy stability (and vice versa) or the corresponding effective population size (a measure of resistance to genetic drift) vary widely among the methods. Moreover, the number of organisms needed to be added or removed to attain similar levels of stabilization also varies for these methods, a fact that has economic implications. Finally, we compare the relative efficiencies of these methods through a composite index of various stability related measures. Our results suggest that Lower Limiter Control (LLC) seems to be the optimal method under most conditions, with the recently proposed Adaptive Limiter Control (ALC) being a close second.

Diet-induced plasticity of life-history traits and gene expression in outbred Drosophila melanogaster population.

Food is fundamental for the survival of organisms, governing growth, maintenance, and reproduction through the provision of essential macronutrients. However, access to food with optimum macronutrient composition, which will maximize the evolutionary fitness of an organism, is not always guaranteed. This leads to dietary mismatches with potential impacts on organismal performance. To understand the consequences of such dietary mismatches, we examined the effects of isocaloric diets varying in macronutrient composition on eight key organismal traits spanning across the lifespan of a large outbred Drosophila melanogaster population (n ~ 2500). Our findings reveal that carbohydrate-reduced isocaloric diets correlates to accelerated pre-adult development and boosts reproductive output without impacting pre-adult viability and body size. Conversely, an elevated dietary carbohydrate content correlated to reduced lifespan in flies, evidenced by accelerated functional senescence including compromised locomotor activity and deteriorating gut integrity. Furthermore, transcriptomic analysis indicated a substantial difference in gene regulatory landscapes between flies subject to high-carbohydrate versus high-protein diet, with elevated protein levels indicating transcriptomes primed for reduced synthesis of fatty acids. Taken together, our study helps advance our understanding of the effect of macronutrient composition on life history traits and their interrelations, offering critical insights into potential adaptive strategies that organisms might adopt against the continual dietary imbalances prevalent in the rapidly evolving environment.

Effect of developmental and adult diet composition on reproductive aging in Drosophila melanogaster.

Diet significantly affects reproductive outcomes across species, yet the precise effects of macronutrient compositions beyond caloric intake on reproductive aging are understudied. Existing literature presents conflicting views on the fertility impacts of nutrient-rich versus nutrient-poor developmental diets, underscoring a notable research gap. This study addresses these gaps by examining effects of isocaloric diets with varied protein-to-carbohydrate ratios during both developmental and adult stages on reproductive aging of a large, outbred Drosophila melanogaster population (n = âˆ¼2100). Our results clearly demonstrate an age-dependent dietary impact on reproductive output, initially dominated by the developmental diet, then by a combination of developmental and adult diets in early to mid-life, and ultimately by the adult diet in later life. Importantly, we found that the effects of developmental and adult diets on reproductive output are independent, with no significant interaction. Further investigations into the mechanisms revealed that the effect of developmental diet on fecundity is regulated via ovarioles formation and vitellogenesis; while, the effect of adult diet on fecundity is mostly regulated only via vitellogenesis. These insights resolve disputes in the literature about dietary impacts on fertility and offer valuable perspectives for optimizing fertility strategies in improving public health and conservation efforts in this changing world.

The genetic basis of differential autodiploidization in evolving yeast populations.

Spontaneous whole-genome duplication, or autodiploidization, is a common route to adaptation in experimental evolution of haploid budding yeast populations. The rate at which autodiploids fix in these populations appears to vary across strain backgrounds, but the genetic basis of these differences remains poorly characterized. Here, we show that the frequency of autodiploidization differs dramatically between two closely related laboratory strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, BY4741 and W303. To investigate the genetic basis of this difference, we crossed these strains to generate hundreds of unique F1 segregants and tested the tendency of each segregant to autodiplodize across hundreds of generations of laboratory evolution. We find that variants in the SSD1 gene are the primary genetic determinant of differences in autodiploidization. We then used multiple laboratory and wild strains of S. cerevisiae to show that clonal populations of strains with a functional copy of SSD1 autodiploidize more frequently in evolution experiments, while knocking out this gene or replacing it with the W303 allele reduces autodiploidization propensity across all genetic backgrounds tested. These results suggest a potential strategy for modifying rates of spontaneous whole-genome duplications in laboratory evolution experiments in haploid budding yeast. They may also have relevance to other settings in which eukaryotic genome stability plays an important role, such as biomanufacturing and the treatment of pathogenic fungal diseases and cancers.

Sex differences in dispersal syndrome are modulated by environment and evolution.

Dispersal syndromes (i.e. suites of phenotypic correlates of dispersal) are potentially important determinants of local adaptation in populations. Species that exhibit sexual dimorphism in their life history or behaviour may exhibit sex-specific differences in their dispersal syndromes. Unfortunately, there is little empirical evidence of sex differences in dispersal syndromes and how they respond to environmental change or dispersal evolution. We investigated these issues using two same-generation studies and a long-term (greater than 70 generations) selection experiment on laboratory populations of Drosophila melanogaster There was a marked difference between the dispersal syndromes of males and females, the extent of which was modulated by nutrition availability. Moreover, dispersal evolution via spatial sorting reversed the direction of dispersal×sex interaction in one trait (desiccation resistance), while eliminating the sex difference in another trait (body size). Thus, we show that sex differences obtained through same-generation trait-associations ('ecological dispersal syndromes') are probably environment-dependent. Moreover, even under constant environments, they are not good predictors of the sex differences in 'evolutionary dispersal syndrome' (i.e. trait-associations shaped during dispersal evolution). Our findings have implications for local adaptation in the context of sex-biased dispersal and habitat-matching, as well as for the use of dispersal syndromes as a proxy of dispersal.This article is part of the theme issue 'Linking local adaptation with the evolution of sex differences'.

Evolution of dispersal syndrome and its corresponding metabolomic changes.

Dispersal is one of the strategies for organisms to deal with climate change and habitat degradation. Therefore, investigating the effects of dispersal evolution on natural populations is of considerable interest to ecologists and conservation biologists. Although it is known that dispersal itself can evolve due to selection, the behavioral, life-history and metabolic consequences of dispersal evolution are not well understood. Here, we explore these issues by subjecting four outbred laboratory populations of Drosophila melanogaster to selection for increased dispersal. The dispersal-selected populations had similar values of body size, fecundity, and longevity as the nonselected lines (controls), but evolved significantly greater locomotor activity, exploratory tendency, and aggression. Untargeted metabolomic fingerprinting through NMR spectroscopy suggested that the selected flies evolved elevated cellular respiration characterized by greater amounts of glucose, AMP, and NAD. Concurrent evolution of higher level of Octopamine and other neurotransmitters indicate a possible mechanism for the behavioral changes in the selected lines. We discuss the generalizability of our findings in the context of observations from natural populations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the evolution of metabolome due to selection for dispersal and its connection to dispersal syndrome evolution.