Changes in Body Melanisation and Not Body Size Affect Mating Success in Drosophila immigrans 37
ous behavioural, physiological and developmen-
tal traits (True 2003 ). For example, in D. elegans,
CD is shorter in brown morph as compared with
the black morph (Hirai et al. 1999 ). In ladybird
beetle ( Adalia bipunctata) dark colour indi-
viduals benefit from increased mating success
(Brakefield 1984 ). In another study, on Cocci-
nella septempunctata higher fecundity was corre-
lated with increase in body melanisation (Rham-
halinghan 1999 ). Pleiotropy or genetic linkage
is responsible for generation of such correlated
behaviour traits. Indirect evidences of such plei-
otropy can be evidenced from correlated pheno-
types in laboratory selection experiments. In the
present work, we performed selection experi-
ment for body melanisation till 18 generations to
study its correlated effect on mating related traits,
i.e. ML and CD in D. immigrans. Selection re-
sults show an increase for body melanisation, CD
and fecundity in dark selected strain and almost
similar decrease for all the traits in light selected
strain irrespective of body size—small or large.
Present work documents the effect of body size
as well as body melanisation on mating success
in wild and laboratory (isofemale line approach)
of D. immigrans. Laboratory-selected dark strain
obtained through selection experiment showed
significantly higher number of mated pairs and
longer CD as compared with light strain. ML was
longer for light and shorter for dark strain. Thus,
the current study supports the role of body mela-
nisation in mating success in D. immigrans.
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