Cross-generational comparison of reproductive success in recently caught strains of Drosophila melanogaster.
Males and females often have opposing strategies for increasing fitness. Males that out-compete others will acquire more mating opportunities and thus have higher lifetime reproductive success. Females that mate with a high quality male receive either direct benefits through productivity or acquisition of additional resources or indirect benefits through the increased fitness of offspring. These components may be in conflict: factors that increase offspring fitness may decrease a female's productivity, and alleles that are beneficial in one sex may be detrimental in the opposite sex. Here, we use a multigenerational study with recently caught strains of Drosophila melanogaster to examine the relationship between parental, male offspring, and female offspring fitness when fitness is measured in a basal non-competitive environment.



We find synergy between parental and offspring lifetime reproductive success, indicating a lack of parent-offspring conflict, and a synergy between son and daughter reproductive success, indicating a lack of intersexual conflict. Interestingly, inbreeding significantly reduced the lifetime reproductive success of daughters, but did not have a significant effect on short-term productivity measures of daughters, sons or parents.



In wild-caught flies, there appears to be no parent-offspring conflict or intersexual conflict for loci influencing offspring production in a anon-competitive environment. Further, there may not be a biologically relevant selection pressure for avoidance of inbreeding depression in wild-type individuals of this short-lived species.
Department of Biology, Western University, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada.
Trinh T X
TT
Nguyen
Department of Biology, Western University, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada. amoehrin@uwo.ca.
Amanda J
AJ
Moehring
D000818:Animals; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005838:Genotype; D007178:Inbreeding; D008297:Male; D012098:Reproduction; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D012737:Sex Factors; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal
Cockerham & Weir biomodel; LRS; Lifetime reproductive success; Parent-offspring conflict