title: Leiden strain: L3
organism: Drosophila melanogaster
description: Line was maintained in five culture bottles with a minimum population size of 60 pairs in each (in total a population size of 300 pairs). The five bottles, within a replicate line, were mixed each generation. The longevity selection took place every other generation. New emerged flies were placed in food vials and transferred to new vials every second day until approximately 50% of the flies were dead. In the first generation of selection this took 4 weeks, after 48 generations of selection 50% mortality was reached after approximately 7 to 8 weeks. The surviving flies were allowed to start the next generation. When flies for this experiment were sampled the lines selected for increased mated longevity had on average a 66% longer median lifespan than control lines in males and 63% in females. Flies from the selection group sampled for sequencing were offspring from an unselected generation, after 48 generations of selection (a total of 107 generations).