Abstract
ABSTRACTFitness and behavioral traits are optimized according to the rearing environment to ensure survival of most organisms including fruit flies Drosophila melanogaster. Fruit flies are known to uphold various trade-offs in their lifespan, development time, fecundity, etc., to confer better survival in the particular exposed environment. The diet of D. melanogaster plays a major role between larval and adult fitness or fitness related traits; its role in the regulation of correlations between pupation height, pre-adult development and adult fitness has not been studied empirically. In our study, we assayed the effect of restricting dietary protein alone from the larval stage to adult stage in fruit flies and studied development time, pre-adult survivorship, pupation height, larval feeding rate and their corresponding lifespan under a light/dark cycle (LD12:12 h). We found that under very low protein concentration in diet, development time and lifespan of the flies increased significantly, along with decreased pupation height and vice versa, while pre-adult survivorship remained unchanged across diets. The results from our study can be taken to suggest that development time is negatively and positively correlated with pupation height and adult lifespan respectively. Thus, a higher protein restriction decreases pupation height and increases development time and vice versa, thereby emphasizing differential alterations taken up by various fitness traits, probably to enhance the overall organismal fitness.This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.
Highlights
The approach of limiting one or more nutrient intake below ad libitum is a commonly used manipulation in diet to study various fitness traits, physiology, metabolic and nutrient sensing pathways in various model organisms (Ormerod et al, 2017; Stefana et al, 2017)
While multiple studies have exhaustingly focused on the role of diets on lifespan, development and fecundity (Metaxakis and Partridge, 2013; Lee, 2015; Ormerod et al, 2017), we aimed to study lifespan, development and pupation height differences in the same flies using different protein restricted diets from the pre-adult stage to death, in order to obtain a concrete correlation between these traits
Our present study aimed to examine the effect of reduced protein diets on development time, pre-adult survivorship, larval feeding rate, pupation height and adult lifespan, and thereby assess the influence of diet on pre-adult and adult fitness traits in D. melanogaster
Summary
The approach of limiting one or more nutrient intake below ad libitum (dietary restriction; DR ) is a commonly used manipulation in diet to study various fitness traits, physiology, metabolic and nutrient sensing pathways in various model organisms (Ormerod et al, 2017; Stefana et al, 2017). Studies have shown that larval competition for food (Klepsatel et al, 2018) and nutrient availability during adulthood can potentially impact the lifespan of D. melanogaster in nature Fitness traits such as pre-adult survivorship, development and lifespan are affected by diet, and by oviposition site (Yang et al, 2008; Lihoreau et al, 2016; Silva-Soares et al, 2017), pupation height (a behavioral trait; Chiang and Hodson, 1950; Sameoto and Miller, 1968) and environmental factors including stress due to starvation and low temperature (Nunney and Cheung, 1997; Hoffmann et al, 2005; Aggarwal et al, 2013). While multiple studies have exhaustingly focused on the role of diets on lifespan, development and fecundity (Metaxakis and Partridge, 2013; Lee, 2015; Ormerod et al, 2017), we aimed to study lifespan, development and pupation height differences in the same flies using different protein restricted diets from the pre-adult stage to death, in order to obtain a concrete correlation between these traits
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