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Insight into post‐mating interactions between the sexes: relatedness suppresses productivity of singly mated female Drosophila melanogaster
Author(s) -
PANHUIS T. M.,
NUNNEY L.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of evolutionary biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.289
H-Index - 128
eISSN - 1420-9101
pISSN - 1010-061X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2007.01363.x
Subject(s) - biology , inbreeding depression , inbreeding , mating , offspring , zoology , sperm competition , productivity , population , drosophila melanogaster , genetics , drosophila (subgenus) , ecology , demography , pregnancy , gene , macroeconomics , sociology , economics
Post‐mating, prefertilization inbreeding avoidance (PPIA) is well established in plants but not in animals. Support for animal PPIA comes from sperm competition studies showing success of a male's gametes declining with his relatedness to the multiply mated female; however, such studies confound female–male and male–male interaction. To avoid this problem, we investigated offspring productivity of singly mated Drosophila melanogaster females using flies from four different genetic backgrounds. Our experiments established that intrapopulation crosses using highly related parents (within‐strain) were significantly less productive than intrapopulation crosses using unrelated individuals from the same population (between‐strain). Furthermore, we showed that these effects were not due to inbreeding depression. The average decrease in offspring productivity of within‐strain crosses relative to between‐strain crosses was 18.3% [nonlaboratory populations: Zimbabwe 20.3%, Riverside 11.4%, neither of which showed inbreeding depression; and temperature‐adapted laboratory populations, uncorrected (corrected) for nonsignificant inbreeding depression: 18 °C, 26.5% (24.2%) and 29 °C, 20.1% (9.5%)]. The significant reduction of within‐cross productivity demonstrates PPIA in the absence of multiple mating.