An association test for survival to heat stress in larvae and adults in Drosophila

In insects, survival to heat-stress (SHS) is a trait related to thermal adaptation (Hoffmann et al., 2003). SHS can increase by acclimation, as heat acclimation is the increase in thermotolerance due to either repeated or long-term exposures to heat stress (Hoffmann et al., 2003). In Drosophila melanogaster, previous work showed that both SHS and another trait of thermal adaptation, knockdown resistance to heat stress (KRHT), is influenced by several Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) including one large-effect QTL in the middle of chromosome 2 (Norry et al., 2004, 2008, 2009; Morgan and Mackay 2006). Here we used a subset of recombinant inbred lines (RIL), which segregate different alleles of the above mentioned QTL (Norry et al., 2009), to explore for possible associations between SHS in larvae and adults as well as between SHS and a trait of resistance to a stress by UV radiation (UV-C resistance) in adult flies.