Harvey Simon C
Department of Geographical and Life Sciences, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom.
J Exp Zool B Mol Dev Evol. 2009 May 15;312B(3):224-30. doi: 10.1002/jez.b.21287.
Species that exploit transient food patches must both effectively utilize such food sources and colonize new patches. The timing and rate of dispersal from existing patches and adaptations that aid dispersal are therefore crucial. Currently, no system exists in which dispersal has been investigated at both the ecological and genetic levels. The extensively studied model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is potentially such a system. Dispersal between food patches in C. elegans has been found to be related to polymorphism in the npr-1 gene, which regulates the tendency of worms to aggregate on food. Here I show that this non-dauer larval dispersal is affected by various environmental variables and that variation is not fully explained by differences in aggregation behavior. Quantitative trait loci mapping identifies candidate genomic regions, separate to npr-1, which affect variation in dispersal between two isolates. These data suggest that the ecology of C. elegans is more complex than previously thought, but indicate that it is experimentally tractable.
依赖短暂食物斑块的物种必须既能有效利用此类食物来源，又能开拓新的斑块。因此，从现有斑块扩散的时间和速率以及有助于扩散的适应性至关重要。目前，尚无一个系统能在生态和遗传层面同时对扩散进行研究。被广泛研究的模式线虫秀丽隐杆线虫可能就是这样一个系统。已发现秀丽隐杆线虫在食物斑块间的扩散与npr - 1基因的多态性有关，该基因调控线虫在食物上聚集的倾向。在此我表明，这种非滞育幼虫的扩散受多种环境变量影响，且这种变异不能完全由聚集行为的差异来解释。数量性状基因座定位确定了与npr - 1不同的候选基因组区域，这些区域影响两个分离株之间扩散的变异。这些数据表明，秀丽隐杆线虫的生态学比之前认为的更为复杂，但表明它在实验上是易于处理的。
