Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
Research Center on Animal Cognition, Center for Integrative Biology, Toulouse University, CNRS, UPS, Toulouse, 31062, France.
Sci Rep. 2019 Mar 11;9(1):4084. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-40701-8.
Aggression and courtship behavior were examined of wild Drosophila melanogaster flies isolated from two contrasting microclimates found at Evolution Canyon in Mt. Carmel, Israel: an African-like dry tropical Slope (AS) and a European-like humid temperate Slope (ES), separated by 250 meters. Studies were carried out to ask whether behavioral differences existed between the two populations obtained from opposite slopes with divergent microclimates in Israel. First, we measured and compared intraslope aggression between same sex fly pairings collected from the same slope. Both male and female flies displayed similar fighting abilities from both slopes. ES males, however, from the humid biome, showed a tendency to lunge more per aggressive encounter, compared with AS males from the dry biome. Next, we tested interslope aggression by pairing flies from opposite slopes. ES males displayed higher numbers of lunges, and won more fights against their AS opponents. We also observed enhanced courtship performances in ES compared to AS males. The fighting and courtship superiority seen in ES males could reinforce fitness and pre-mating reproductive isolation mechanisms that underlie incipient sympatric speciation. This may support an evolutionary advantage of adaptively divergent fruit fly aggression phenotypes from different environments.
我们研究了从以色列 Carmel 山的 Evolution Canyon 的两个截然不同的小气候中分离出来的两种野生黑腹果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）的攻击和求爱行为：一个类似于非洲的干燥热带斜坡（AS）和一个类似于欧洲的潮湿温带斜坡（ES），两者相距 250 米。我们进行了研究，以了解来自具有不同小气候的相反斜坡的两个种群之间是否存在行为差异。首先，我们测量并比较了从同一斜坡收集的相同性别蝇配对之间的同坡内攻击性。来自两个斜坡的雄性和雌性蝇都表现出相似的战斗能力。然而，来自潮湿生物群落的 ES 雄性在每一次攻击中都比来自干燥生物群落的 AS 雄性更倾向于猛冲。接下来，我们通过将来自相反斜坡的蝇配对来测试跨坡攻击。ES 雄性表现出更高的猛冲次数，并击败了来自 AS 的对手。我们还观察到 ES 雄性比 AS 雄性表现出更高的求爱行为。ES 雄性的战斗和求爱优势可能会增强适应不同环境的适应性分歧的果蝇攻击表型的适合度和交配前生殖隔离机制，从而支持共生物种形成的进化优势。
