Linking molecular and reproductive patterns - thermal adaptation in the yellow dung fly at a global scale

• Antragstellerin: Dr. Stephanie S. Bauerfeind
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Evolution, Anthropologie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2008 bis 2011
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 64222962

Latitudinal variation in molecular and life history traits is often linked to seasonal or thermal adaptation. Both have generally been studied in isolation from each other, yet integration is central to understand life history responses to environmental demands. This project will focus on clinal variation in reproductive traits (particularly egg size) and its link to variation in molecular traits (allelic variation at loci coding for key metabolic enzymes) using the widespread yellow dung fly (YDF, Scathophaga stercoraria). Latitudinal clines in egg size have been demonstrated in a few species, though the adaptive significance of such variation, the covariance between egg size and egg quality as well as the biochemical and physiological control mechanisms underlying resource allocation processes remain largely unexplored. The latter may well include the influence of major genes in central metabolic pathways such as Phosphoglucomutase (PGM), which has been found to exhibit latitudinal allelic variation and may thus be under thermal selection in the YDF. Using a variety of tools including comparative (cross-continental), molecular genetic and experimental approaches I aim at disentangling whether latitudinal clines in molecular, morphological and reproductive traits are linked in the YDF and caused by thermal adaptation.

• DFG-Verfahren: Forschungsstipendien
• Internationaler Bezug: Schweiz, USA
• Gastgeber: Professor Dr. Wolf Blanckenhorn; Dr. Goggy Davidowitz; Professor Dr. Charles W. Fox