Search results for "Drosophila virilis"

2016

Cold acclimation is a critical physiological adaptation for coping with seasonal cold. By increasing their cold tolerance individuals can remain active for longer at the onset of winter and can recover more quickly from a cold shock. In insects, despite many physiological studies, little is known about the genetic basis of cold acclimation. Recently, transcriptomic analyses in Drosophila virilis and D. montana revealed candidate genes for cold acclimation by identifying genes upregulated during exposure to cold. Here, we test the role of myo-inositol-1-phosphate synthase (Inos), in cold tolerance in D. montana using an RNAi approach. D. montana has a circumpolar distribution and overwinters…

How consistent are the transcriptome changes associated with cold acclimation in two species of the Drosophila virilis group?

2015

This work was financially support by a Marie Curie Initial Training Network grant, “Understanding the evolutionary origin of biological diversity” (ITN-2008–213780 SPECIATION), grants from the Academy of Finland to A.H. (project 132619) and M.K. (projects 268214 and 272927), a grant from NERC, UK to M.G.R. (grant NE/J020818/1), and NERC, UK PhD studentship to D.J.P. (NE/I528634/1). For many organisms the ability to cold acclimate with the onset of seasonal cold has major implications for their fitness. In insects, where this ability is widespread, the physiological changes associated with increased cold tolerance have been well studied. Despite this, little work has been done to trace chang…

Genetic and phenotypic divergence in Drosophila virilis and D. montana

2007

Tapahtuuko lajien toisistaan erillään olevien populaatioiden ilmiasuun liittyvien piirteiden eriytyminen populaatioiden geneettisen eriytymisen sivutuotteena vai nopeutuuko tällaisten piirteiden eriytyminen luonnonvalinnan tai seksuaalivalinnan vaikutuksesta? Tätä kysymystä Jarkko Routtu pohti väitöskirjassaan. Routtu tutki maapallon eri puolilta peräisin olevien mahlakärpäskantojen eriytymistä, D. virilis -lajilla koiraan kosintalaulun ja D. montana -lajilla koiraan kosintalaulun sekä siipien ja genitaalien koon ja muodon perusteella.- Erityisesti Drosophila montanalla seksuaalivalinnan vaikutus populaatioiden eriytymiseen on kiinnostavaa, koska tämän lajin naaraat ovat mieltyneet koiraan …

Adaptation and ecological speciation in seasonally varying environments at high latitudes: Drosophila virilis group

2022

Living in high latitudes and altitudes sets specific requirements on species’ ability to forecast seasonal changes and to respond to them in an appropriate way. Adaptation into diverse environmental conditions can also lead to ecological speciation through habitat isolation or by inducing changes in traits that influence assortative mating. In this review, we explain how the unique time-measuring systems of Drosophila virilis group species have enabled the species to occupy high latitudes and how the traits involved in species reproduction and survival exhibit strong linkage with latitudinally varying photoperiodic and climatic conditions. We also describe variation in reproductive barriers…

Characterization of a Cu/Zn Superoxide dismutase-encoding gene region in Drosophila willistoni

1994

A Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase-encoding gene (Sod) from Drosophila willistoni was cloned and sequenced. The gene shows a typical structure for a fruit-fly Sod gene, with a coding region of 462 bp in two exons separated by a 417-bp intron. Comparison of the Sod sequences from D. willistoni and D. melanogaster suggests that these species are only remotely related. Downstream from the Sod gene, there is an ORF on the opposite strand that putatively encodes the last exon of an unidentified gene. The polyadenylation signals of the two genes are separated by only 61 bp in D. willistoni, conforming to the common picture of compact dipteran genomes.

Cold tolerance and cold-induced modulation of gene expression in two Drosophila virilis group species with different distributions

2011

Abstract The importance of high and low temperature tolerance in adaptation to changing environmental conditions has evoked new interest in modulations in gene expression and metabolism linked with stress tolerance. We investigated the effects of rapid cold hardening and cold acclimatization on the chill coma recovery times of two Drosophila virilis group species, Drosophila montana and D. virilis, with different distributions and utilized a candidate gene approach to trace changes in their gene expression during and after the cold treatments. The study showed that cold acclimatization clearly decreases chill coma recovery times in both species, whereas rapid cold hardening did not have a s…

Phylogeographic patterns in Drosophila montana

2006

The Drosophila virilis species group offers valuable opportunities for studying the roles of chromosomal re-arrangements and mating signals in speciation. The 13 species are divided into two subgroups, the montana and virilis 'phylads'. There is greater differentiation among species within the montana phylad in both karyotype and acoustic signals than exists among members of the virilis phylad. Drosophila montana is a divergent species which is included in the montana phylad. Here, we analyse the phylogeography of D. montana to provide a framework for understanding divergence of acoustic signals among populations. We analysed mitochondrial sequences corresponding to the cytochrome oxidase I…

Evolution of gypsy Endogenous Retrovirus in the Drosophila obscura Species Group

2000

The Ty3/gypsy family of retroelements is closely related to retroviruses, and some of their members have an open reading frame resembling the retroviral gene env. Sequences homologous to the gypsy element from Drosophila melanogaster are widely distributed among Drosophila species. In this work, we report a phylogenetic study based mainly on the analysis of the 5' region of the env gene from several species of the obscura group, and also from sequences already reported of D. melanogaster, Drosophila virilis, and Drosophila hydei. Our results indicate that the gypsy elements from species of the obscura group constitute a monophyletic group which has strongly diverged from the prototypic D. m…

Microsatellite-based species identification method for Drosophila virilis group species

2007

Species of the D. virilis group are widely used in evolutionary research, but the individuals of different species are difficult to distinguish from each other morphologically. We constructed a fast and easy microsatellite-based identification method for the species of the group occurring sympatrically in northern Europe. The neighbor joining tree based on 14 microsatellite loci also gave a good resolution of the species divergence pattern in the whole group.

Sequence, molecular organization and products of the Drosophila virilis homologs of the D. melanogaster nested genes lethal(2)tumorous imaginal discs…

1997

Abstract In this study, we describe the isolation of the Drosophila virilis (Dvir) 6201-bp genomic fragment homologous to a 7047-bp genomic region of D. melanogaster (Dmel) that harbors the nested genes lethal(2)tumorous imaginal discs (l(2)tid), lethal(2)neighbour of tid (l(2)not) and lethal(2)relative of tid (l(2)rot). The isolated fragment, which maps at the cytogenetic position 50A5 on chromosome 5, carries the Dvir homologs of the Dmel genes l(2)tid and l(2)not. In both cases, the interspecific comparison of the determined sequences reveals a high homology regarding the protein coding regions and a high degree of evolutionary divergence concerning the intronic parts of the genes. In th…