Drosophila are small flies found all around the world. Most of them like warm conditions and others your fruit bowl.
The european specie Drosophila Subobscura invaded the Pacific Coast of Chile 1978 probably using fruit cargo ships. In North America they arrived in the early 1980s.
Biologists like them as well, because they are easy to feed, reproduce fast and are small, it is simple to catalog all cells and genes. Drosophila produce several generations in a single year.
Researchers from Universities of Barcelona, Seattle and Williamsburg collected data about mean temperature and compared it with gene changes of 26 populations in Europe, North and South America. The results (abstract) are published in Science Express, 2006-08-31.
They detected specific genetic compositions which correspond to the latitude of a population. The increase of temperature over the last decades makes these compositions shifting north and south respectively with changing climate conditions.
What we’re showing is that global warming is leaving its imprint on genes, …
For this to happen in such a short time-frame in so many parts of the world is rather disturbing, …
The good news is that these flies may be able to adapt, at least to some extent, to a warming climate. However, organisms with longer intervals between new generations, humans or sequoia trees for example, probably can’t adapt nearly as readily.
Picture Credit: Two mutant fruit flies, Al Handler
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