DESATURASE‐2 , ENVIRONMENTAL ADAPTATION, AND SEXUAL ISOLATION IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER

In a previous paper In their study, Greenberg et al. used targeted gene replacement to construct lines having different alleles of the desaturase-2 (desat2) locus-a gene involved in synthesis of cuticular hydrocarbons. They found that different alleles had different effects on flies' responses to cold and starvation stress: carriers of the African and Caribbean allele (ds2 Z ) consistently had less cold resistance and greater starvation resistance than carriers of the Cosmopolitan allele (ds2 M ). Because there was earlier evidence for sexual isolation between carriers of different desat2 alleles (African females homozygous for ds2 Z discriminate against non-African males homozygous for ds2 M ; Fang et al.…

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  National Institutes of Health