School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Vic., Australia.
Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
J Evol Biol. 2022 Nov;35(11):1548-1557. doi: 10.1111/jeb.14104. Epub 2022 Oct 5.
Sex-based differences in physiological traits may be influenced by both evolutionary and environmental factors. Here we used male and female flies from >80 Drosophila species reared under common conditions to examine variance in a number of physiological traits including size, starvation, desiccation and thermal tolerance. Sex-based differences for desiccation and starvation resistance were comparable in magnitude to those for size, with females tending to be relatively more resistant than males. In contrast thermal resistance showed low divergence between the sexes. Phylogenetic signal was detected for measures of divergence between the sexes, such that species from the Sophophora clade showed larger differences between the sexes than species from the Drosophila clade. We also found that sex-based differences in desiccation resistance, body size and starvation resistance were weakly associated with climate (annual mean temperature/precipitation seasonality) but the direction and association with environment depended on phylogenetic position. The results suggest that divergence between the sexes can be linked to environmental factors, while an association with phylogeny suggests sex-based differences persist over long evolutionary time-frames.
性别在生理特征上的差异可能受到进化和环境因素的影响。在这里，我们使用了在相同条件下培养的 80 多种果蝇的雄性和雌性个体，以研究包括体型、饥饿、干旱和耐热性在内的多种生理特征的差异。在干旱和饥饿抗性方面，性别差异的幅度与体型相当，雌性比雄性更具抗性。相比之下，耐热性在两性之间的差异很小。性别之间的差异在进化上存在信号，例如，Sophophora 进化枝的物种之间的性别差异比 Drosophila 进化枝的物种之间的差异更大。我们还发现，干旱抗性、体型和饥饿抗性的性别差异与气候（年平均温度/降水季节性）弱相关，但与环境的关联取决于系统发育位置。结果表明，性别差异可能与环境因素有关，而与系统发育的关联表明，性别差异在长期的进化时间内持续存在。
