The role of host microbiota in aging of Drosophilamelanogaster
Authors: Courtney Mueller; Parvin Shahrestani
Affiliation: California State University, Fullerton
Keywords: m. microbiome; q. adaptation
Laboratory selection can cause large phenotypic differences in eukaryotic populations without the introduction of new mutations. A key potential contributor to an animal's evolution could be the host’s microbiota, however this element has been largely ignored in previous laboratory studies. Indeed, many host traits that can evolve in response to laboratory selection, can also be influenced by the microbiota. Moreover, when populations undergo laboratory selection for divergence in health-related traits, they also become differentiated in their microbiota. What evolves first? Do host traits evolve before the host microbiota changes or does the microbiota change as a result of the evolution of the host phenotype? I hypothesize that if the host phenotype evolves before the microbiota, then populations that are selected for fast development will evolve before changes to the microbiota. Using laboratory selection, I will evolve fast-developing populations from slow-developing populations. Each generation, for at least 10 generations, I will monitor development time and host genetic control of the microbiota. I predict that when populations of Drosophilamelanogaster are selected for fast development, changes to development time evolve before changes to the microbiota. In other words, the microbial changes are a consequence of host evolution rather than a contributor to host evolution. Efforts to uncover the mechanisms of fast evolution are widely studied without the microbial component. Here is one of the first looks into how microbiota affect development time of D. melanogaster.