RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Behavioral variation in Drosophila melanogaster: no evidence for common alleles of large-effect at the foraging gene in a population from North Carolina, USA
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 004325
DO 10.1101/004325
A1 Thomas L. Turner
A1 Christopher C. Giauque
A1 Daniel R. Schrider
A1 Andrew D. Kern
YR 2015
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/01/16/004325.abstract
AB It has been postulated that natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster are comprised of two behavioral morphs termed "rover" and "sitter", and that this variation is caused mainly by large-effect alleles at a single locus. Contrary to common assertions, however, published support for the existence of common large effect alleles in nature is quite limited. To further investigate, we quantified the foraging behavior of 36 sequenced strains from a natural population, performed an association study, and described patterns of molecular evolution at the foraging locus. Though there was significant variation in foraging behavior among genotypes, this variation was continuously distributed and not significantly associated with genetic variation at the foraging gene. Patterns of molecular population genetic variation at this gene also provide no support for the hypothesis that for is a target of recent balancing selection. Though our data only apply to this specific population, we propose that additional data is required to support a hypothesis of common alleles of large effect on foraging behavior in nature.