Melanic pigmentation and light preference within and between two Drosophila species

Environmental adaptation and species divergence often involve suites of co-evolving traits. Pigmentation in insects presents a variable, adaptive, and well-characterized class of phenotypes for which correlations with multiple other traits have been demonstrated. In Drosophila, the pigmentation genes ebony and tan have pleiotropic effects on flies’ response to light, creating the potential for correlated evolution of pigmentation and vision. Here we investigate differences in light preference within and between two sister species, Drosophila americana and D. novamexicana, which differ in pigmentation in part because of evolution at ebony and tan, and occupy environments that differ in many variables including solar radiation. We hypothesized that lighter pigmentation would be correlated with a greater preference for environmental light, and tested this hypothesis using a habitat choice experiment. In a first set of experiments, using males of D. novamexicana line N14 and D. americana line A00, the light-bodied D. novamexicana was found slightly but significantly more often than D. americana in the light habitat. A second experiment, which included additional lines and females as well as males, failed to find any significant difference between D. novamexicana-N14 and D. americana-A00. Additionally, the other dark line of D. americana (A04) was found in the light habitat more often than the light-bodied D. novamexicana-N14, in contrast to our predictions. However, the lightest line of D. americana, A01, was found substantially and significantly more often in the light habitat than the two darker lines of D. americana, thus providing partial support for our hypothesis. Finally, across all four lines, females were found more often in the light habitat than their more darkly-pigmented male counterparts. Additional replication is needed to corroborate these findings and evaluate conflicting results, with the consistent effect of sex within and between species providing an especially intriguing avenue for further research.