Laboratory studies on Drosophila have revealed that resistance to one environmental stress often correlates with resistance to other stresses. There is also evidence on genetic correlations between ...stress resistance, longevity and other fitness‐related traits. The present work investigates these associations using artificial selection in Drosophila melanogaster. Adult flies were selected for increased survival after severe cold, heat, desiccation and starvation stresses as well as increased heat‐knockdown time and lifespan (CS, HS, DS, SS, KS and LS line sets, respectively). The number of selection generations was 11 for LS, 27 for SS and 21 for other lines, with selection intensity being around 0.80. For each set of lines, the five stress‐resistance parameters mentioned above as well as longevity (in a nonstressful environment) were estimated. In addition, preadult developmental time, early age productivity and thorax length were examined in all lines reared under nonstressful conditions. Comparing the selection lines with unselected control revealed clear‐cut direct selection responses for the stress‐resistance traits. Starvation resistance increased as correlated response in all sets of selection lines, with the exception of HS. Positive correlated responses were also found for survival after cold shock (HS and DS) and heat shock (KS and DS). With regard to values of resistance across different stress assays, the HS and KS lines were most similar. The resistance values of the SS lines were close to those of the LS lines and tended to be the lowest among all selection lines. Developmental time was extended in the SS and KS lines, whereas the LS lines showed a reduction in thorax length. The results indicate a possibility of different multiple‐stress‐resistance mechanisms for the examined traits and fitness costs associated with stress resistance and longevity.
The concept that lifespan is a function of the capacity to withstand extrinsic stress is very old. In concordance with this, long-lived individuals often have increased resistance against a variety ...of stresses throughout life. Genes underlying the stress response may therefore have the ability to affect lifespan. The progress in modern genetic techniques has allowed researchers to test this idea. The general stress response involves the expression of stress proteins, such as chaperones and antioxidative proteins, downregulation of genes involved in energy metabolism and the release of protective substances. Do these same changes in patterns of expression have the ability to mitigate ageing and prolong lifespan? It appears that parts of this response indeed are also associated with extended longevity, whereas some elements are not, due to their high cost or long-term deleterious consequences. Here we briefly review the state of the art of research on ageing and longevity in the model organism
Drosophila, with focus on the role of the general stress response. We will conclude by contemplating some of the implications of the findings in this research and will suggest several directions for future research.
Heat-induced hormesis, i.e. the beneficial effect of mild heat-induced stress, increases the average lifespan of many organisms. This effect, which depends on the heat shock factor, decreases the log ...mortality rate weeks after the stress has ceased. To identify candidate genes that mediate this lifespan-prolonging effect late in life, we treated flies with mild heat stress (34°C for 2h) 3 times early in life and compared the transcriptomic response in these flies versus non-heat-treated controls 10–51days after the last heat treatment. We found significant transcriptomic changes in the heat-treated flies. Several hsp70 probe sets were up-regulated 1.7–2-fold in the mildly stressed flies weeks after the last heat treatment (P<0.01). This result was unexpected as the major Drosophila heat shock protein, Hsp70, is reported to return to normal levels of expression shortly after heat stress. We conclude that the heat shock response, and Hsp70 in particular, may be central to the heat-induced increase in the average lifespan in flies that are exposed to mild heat stress early in life.
•Transcriptomic changes induced by bouts of mild heat stress last for more than a week.•Hsp70 was up-regulated in mildly heat-stressed flies long after the last treatment.•The heat shock response is likely central to stress induced increased lifespan.
The ability to respond evolutionarily to increasing temperatures is important for survival of ectotherms in a changing climate. Recent studies suggest that upper thermal limits may be evolutionary ...constrained. We address this hypothesis in a laboratory evolution experiment, encompassing ecologically relevant thermal regimes. To examine the potential for species to respond to climate change, we exposed replicate populations of Drosophila melanogaster to increasing temperatures (0.3 °C every generation) for 20 generations, whereas corresponding replicate control populations were held at benign thermal conditions throughout the experiment. We hypothesized that replicate populations exposed to increasing temperatures would show increased resistance to warm and dry environments compared with replicate control populations. Contrasting replicate populations held at the two thermal regimes showed (i) an increase in desiccation resistance and a decline in heat knock‐down resistance in replicate populations exposed to increasing temperatures, (ii) similar egg‐to‐adult viability and fecundity in replicate populations from the two thermal regimes, when assessed at high stressful temperatures and (iii) no difference in nucleotide diversity between thermal regimes. The limited scope for adaptive evolutionary responses shown in this study highlights the challenges faced by ectotherms under climate change.
The adaptability of organisms to novel environmental conditions depends on the amount of genetic variance present in the population as well as on the ability of individuals to adjust their phenotype ...through phenotypic plasticity. Here, we investigated the phenotypic plasticity induced by a single generation's exposure to three different temperature regimes with respect to several life‐history and stress‐resistance traits in a natural population of Drosophila simulans. We studied a constant as well as a predictably and an unpredictably fluctuating temperature regime. We found high levels of phenotypic plasticity among all temperature regimes, suggesting a strong influence of both temperature fluctuations and their predictability. Increased heat tolerance was observed for flies developed in both types of fluctuating thermal environments compared with flies developed in a constant environment. We suggest that this was due to beneficial hardening when developing in either fluctuating temperature environment. To our surprise, flies that developed in constant and predictably changing environments were similar to each other in most traits when compared to flies from the unpredictably fluctuating environment. The unpredictably changing thermal environment imposed the most stressful condition, resulting in the lowest performance for stress‐related traits, even though the absolute temperature changes never exceeded that of the predictably fluctuating environment. The overall decreased stress resistance of flies in the unpredictably fluctuating environment may be the consequence of maladaptive phenotypic plasticity in this setting, indicating that the adaptive value of plasticity depends on the predictability of the environment.
Many natural populations experience inbreeding and genetic drift as a consequence of nonrandom mating or low population size. Furthermore, they face environmental challenges that may interact ...synergistically with deleterious consequences of increased homozygosity and further decrease fitness. Most studies on inbreeding-environment (I-E) interactions use one or two stress levels, whereby the resolution of the possible stress and inbreeding depression interaction is low. Here we produced Drosophila melanogaster replicate populations, maintained at three different population sizes (10, 50 and a control size of 500) for 25 generations. A nutritional stress gradient was imposed on the replicate populations by exposing them to 11 different concentrations of yeast in the developmental medium. We assessed the consequences of nutritional stress by scoring egg-to-adult viability and body mass of emerged flies. We found: (1) unequivocal evidence for I-E interactions in egg-to-adult viability and to a lesser extent in dry body mass, with inbreeding depression being more severe under higher levels of nutritional stress; (2) a steeper increase in inbreeding depression for replicate populations of size 10 with increasing nutritional stress than for replicate populations of size 50; (3) a nonlinear norm of reaction between inbreeding depression and nutritional stress; and (4) a faster increase in number of lethal equivalents in replicate populations of size 10 compared with replicate populations of size 50 with increasing nutritional stress levels. Our data provide novel and strong evidence that deleterious fitness consequences of I-E interactions are more pronounced at higher nutritional stress and at higher inbreeding levels.
Little is known about local adaptations in marine fishes since population genetic surveys in these species have typically not applied genetic markers subject to selection. In this study, we used a ...candidate gene approach to investigate adaptive population divergence in the European flounder (Platichthys flesus L.) throughout the northeastern Atlantic. We contrasted patterns of genetic variation in a presumably neutral microsatellite baseline to patterns from a heat-shock cognate protein gene, Hsc70. Using two different neutrality tests we found that the microsatellite data set most likely represented a neutral baseline. In contrast, Hsc70 strongly deviated from neutral expectations. Importantly, when estimating standardized levels of population divergence (F(ST)'), we also found a large discrepancy in the patterns of structuring in the two data sets. Thus, samples grouped according to geographical or historical proximity with regards to microsatellites, but according to environmental similarities with regards to Hsc70. The differences between the data sets were particularly pronounced in pairwise comparisons involving populations in the western and central Baltic Sea. For instance, the genetic differentiation between geographically close Baltic Sea and North Sea populations was found to be 0.02 and 0.45 for microsatellites and Hsc70 respectively. Our results strongly suggest adaptive population divergence and indicate local adaptations at the DNA level in a background of high levels of gene flow, typically found in many marine fish species. Furthermore, this study highlights the usefulness of the candidate gene approach for demonstrating local selection in non-model organisms such as most marine fishes.
The selective past of populations is presumed to affect the levels of phenotypic plasticity. Experimental evolution at constant temperatures is generally expected to lead to a decreased level of ...plasticity due to presumed costs associated with phenotypic plasticity when not needed. In this study, we investigated the effect of experimental evolution in constant, predictable and unpredictable daily fluctuating temperature regimes on the levels of phenotype plasticity in several life history and stress resistance traits in Drosophila simulans. Contrary to the expectation, evolution in the different regimes did not affect the levels of plasticity in any of the traits investigated even though the populations from the different thermal regimes had evolved different stress resistance and fitness trait means. Although costs associated with phenotypic plasticity are known, our results suggest that the maintenance of phenotypic plasticity might come at low and negligible costs, and thus, the potential of phenotypic plasticity to evolve in populations exposed to different environmental conditions might be limited.
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