Does inbreeding affects developmental stability in Drosophila subobscura populations ?

Abstract

In the present paper, we focused on the coadaptive aspect of genetic variability at population level and its relation to genomic stress such as inbreeding. The paper evaluates the effects of an experimental reduction of average heterozygosity after fourteen generations of systematic inbreeding in laboratory conditions, on developmental stability in Drosophila subobscura populations from two ecologically and topologically distinct habitats, knowing that they possess a certain degree of genetic differences due to their different evolutionary histories. The aims were to analyze: (i) the variability change of wing size (length and width) among the inbred lines from both populations; (ii) the relations between homozigosity and level of fluctuating asymmetry as a potential measure of developmental instability, in inbred lines originating from two populations. Results for the wing size showed similar between line variability pattern across generations of systematic inbreeding in both populations. The obtained results suggest that variability of fluctuating asymmetry as a measure of developmental instability can not be related to homozygosity due to inbreeding per se, in both experimental populations.