Intraspecific Polymorphism to Interspecific Divergence: Genetics of Pigmentation in Drosophila

Drosophila Body Color Fly body color is controlled by a variety of genes and alleles. Now Wittkopp et al. (p. 540) describe how two genes at the ebony and tan genetic loci control body color among two closely related species, Drosophila americana and D. novamexicana. Variations at the tan locus and linked to the ebony locus also contribute to intraspecific pigmentation changes with geography in D. americana. The sequencing of multiple isolates suggests that some strains of D. americana carry alleles of tan and ebony that are more closely related to the D. novamexicana alleles than they are to other D. americana alleles. Thus, the genetic determinants of both inter- and intraspecies color variation is due to shared alleles. Color-determining genes in flies show an ancestral polymorphism that contributes to variation, both within and between species. Genetic changes contributing to phenotypic differences within or between species have been identified for a handful of traits, but the relationship between alleles underlying intraspecific polymorphism and interspecific divergence is largely unknown. We found that noncoding changes in the tan gene, as well as changes linked to the ebony gene, contribute to pigmentation divergence between closely related Drosophila species. Moreover, we found that alleles linked to tan and ebony fixed in one Drosophila species also contribute to variation within another species, and that multiple genotypes underlie similar phenotypes even within the same population. These alleles appear to predate speciation, which suggests that standing genetic variation present in the common ancestor gave rise to both intraspecific polymorphism and interspecific divergence.

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