Ergi D. Ozsoy

Body size is an important trait involved in overall fitness through its effects on mating success, fecundity, resource acquisition and mortality, and desiccation resistance. In this study, we raised inbred Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito cohorts at different developmental temperatures of 20°, 23°, and 27° C. As an indicator of the amount of genetic variation in body size, we estimated the narrow-sense heritability of body sizes defined as wing aspect ratios. Our results show that narrow-sense heritability of the body size increased as the developmental temperature increased. We also detected the presence of strong genotype-by-environment (G × E) interaction from low cross-environmental correlations. The body size of each temperature regime followed the general rule that higher temperatures produce smaller individuals. We suggest that the increase in genetic variation with increasing temperature might be due to an unleashing of the cryptic genetic variation of the putative genes affecting body size. We conclude that this increase in genetic variation tracking the environmental (developmental temperature) change could have considerable implications for the distribution and range expansion of Cx. quinquefasciatus, especially in warmer environments.

Offspring from Drosophila melanogaster populations of different maternal age were derived and aged. Our results showed that offspring longevities do not follow inversely the mother’s ages i.e., increasing age of the mothers do not result in decreased offspring mean longevities in general (no typical Lansing effect). We found that also each population has distinct offspring age specific mortality rates with increasing maternal age. Overall, we suggest, this may point to unique genetic background effect of each particular population has on longevities within context of maternal age, considering that populations studied would signify distinct genetic variation states of samples of different geographic origin.

Small number of Drosophila melanogasterpopulations from two distinct geographical regions of Turkey, Central Anatolia and Black Sea, were studied. Populations sampled were electrophoresed for a...