The Drosophila melanogaster Hybrid male rescue Gene Causes Inviability in Male and Female Species Hybrids

The Drosophila melanogaster mutation Hmr rescues inviable hybrid sons from the cross of D. melanogaster females to males of its sibling species D. mauritiana, D. simulans, and D. sechellia. We have extended previous observations that hybrid daughters from this cross are poorly viable at high temperatures and have shown that this female lethality is suppressed by Hmr and the rescue mutations In(1)AB and D. simulans Lhr. Deficiencies defined here as Hmr− also suppressed lethality, demonstrating that reducing Hmr+ activity can rescue otherwise inviable hybrids. An Hmr+ duplication had the opposite effect of reducing the viability of female and sibling X-male hybrid progeny. Similar dose-dependent viability effects of Hmr were observed in the reciprocal cross of D. simulans females to D. melanogaster males. Finally, Lhr and Hmr+ were shown to have mutually antagonistic effects on hybrid viability. These data suggest a model where the interaction of sibling species Lhr+ and D. melanogaster Hmr+ causes lethality in both sexes of species hybrids and in both directions of crossing. Our results further suggest that a twofold difference in Hmr+ dosage accounts in part for the differential viability of male and female hybrid progeny, but also that additional, unidentified genes must be invoked to account for the invariant lethality of hybrid sons of D. melanogaster mothers. Implications of our findings for understanding Haldane's rule—the observation that hybrid breakdown is often specific to the heterogametic sex—are also discussed.