No abstract

The effect of the floral origin of pollen on the reproductive success of Bombus terrestris Latrum bumblebee (Apidae: Bombinae), was investigated by feeding micro‐colonies of queenless workers with different pollen types. We used a commercial pollen blend and three unifloral pollens, Prunus, Salix, and Taraxacum. Among the unifloral pollens, pollen quality did not influence egg production, but did influence egg laying delay and larval growth. The quality of pollens varied according to their protein content and protein efficacy (PE). Pollen from Prunus (27.5% w/w protein, PE = 10) resulted in the largest number of progeny, whereas Taraxacum (17.2% w/w protein, PE = 0) did not result in any offspring, due to high oophagy and larval ejection. Salix (20% w/w protein) and the blend (222.8% protein) diets gave rise to intermediate reproductive outputs. When pollen quality was sufficient for larval growth, the fitness of the male offspring was not affected over the range of the experimental diets. Our results suggest that quantitative and qualitative variations of pollen proteins have considerable influence on the reproductive success of bumblebees. Furthermore, larval growth has specific nutritive demands not provided by Taraxacum pollen, which is missing two essential amino acids.

Environmental factors during juvenile growth such as temperature and nutrition have major effects on adult morphology and life-history traits. In Drosophila melanogaster, ovary size, measured as ovariole number, and body size, measured as thorax length, are developmentally plastic traits with respect to larval nutrition. Herein we investigated the genetic basis for plasticity of ovariole number and body size, as well the genetic basis for their allometric relationship using recombinant inbred lines (RILs) derived from a natural population in Winters, California. We reared 196 RILs in four yeast concentrations and measured ovariole number and body size. The genetic correlation between ovariole number and thorax length was positive, but the strength of this correlation decreased with increasing yeast concentration. Genetic variation and genotype-by-environment (G 3 E) interactions were observed for both traits. We identified quantitative trait loci (QTL), epistatic, QTL-by-environment, and epistatic-by-environment interactions for both traits and their scaling relationships. The results are discussed in the context of multivariate trait evolution.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sex-specific expression of alternative transcripts in Drosophila

A genome-wide microarray analysis of sex-specific expression of alternative transcripts in Drosophila shows sexual dimorphism in transcript abundance for 53% of the genes.

Human activity impacts the evolutionary trajectories of many species worldwide. Global trade of agricultural goods contributes to the dispersal of pathogens reshaping their genetic makeup and providing opportunities for virulence gains. Understanding how pathogens surmount control strategies and cope with new climates is crucial to predicting the future impact of crop pathogens. Here, we address this by assembling a global thousand-genome panel of Zymoseptoria tritici, a major fungal pathogen of wheat reported in all production areas worldwide. We identify the global invasion routes and ongoing genetic exchange of the pathogen among wheat-growing regions. We find that the global expansion was accompanied by increased activity of transposable elements and weakened genomic defenses. Finally, we find significant standing variation for adaptation to new climates encountered during the global spread. Our work shows how large population genomic panels enable deep insights into the evolutionary trajectory of a major crop pathogen.