THE GENETIC BASIS OF EVOLUTION OF THE MALE COURTSHIP SOUNDS IN THE DROSOPHILA VIRILIS GROUP.

When courting, males of the Drosophila virilis group vibrate their wings and emit species-specific courtship sounds consisting of trains of polycyclic sound pulses. To analyze the genetic basis of evolutionary changes in the sounds we made an F1 diallel set of reciprocal crosses between the members of the virilis phylad of the group (two stocks of D. virilis and one of D. americana americana, D. a. texana, D. novamexicana, and D. lummei). We also crossed the D. virilis stocks with the members of the montana phylad of the same group (D. kanekoi, D. littoralis, D. borealis, D. flavomontana, D. lacicola, and D. montana) and made a backcross (D. virilis x D. littoralis) x D. virilis using a D. virilis marker stock (b; sv t tb gp; cd; pe). The sounds of the hybrids were analyzed using the following parameters: the length of a pulse train (PTL), the number of pulses in a train (PN), the interpulse interval (IPI), the length of a pulse (PL), the number of cycles in a pulse (CN), and the length of a cycle (CL). In the virilis phylad, the differences between species appeared to be determined mainly by autosomal genes in each sound trait. The heritabilities (narrow-/broad-sense) obtained from the diallel tables were the following: PTL 0.662/0.817, PN 0.651/0.841, IPI 0.193/0.546, PL 0.408/0.552, CN 0.425/0.719, and CL 0.361/0.764. The direction of dominance is for longer PTL, higher PN and CN, and shorter IPI and CL. PL shows ambidirectional dominance. In the sounds of the virilis phylad species, PTL and PL seem to be phenotypically the most important parameters, since their components (PN and IPI for PTL, CN and CL for PL) are negatively correlated. In crosses between D. virilis and D. littoralis or D. flavomontana reciprocal hybrids differed from each other in PTL, IPI, PL, and CN indicating X-chromosomal or cytoplasmic inheritance. In the backcrosses between D. virilis and D. littoralis the role of the X chromosome was ascertained to be decisive. We conclude that an X-chromosomal major change allowing variation in IPI has occurred during the separation of the two D. virilis group phylads, the long IPI allowing variation also in PL (and CN). The evolution of the sounds in the virilis phylad has probably gone towards longer and denser pulse trains, while in the montana phylad the sounds have evolved in different directions. © 1987 The Society for the Study of Evolution.