Rapid decline of fitness in panmictic populations of Drosophila melanogaster maintained under relaxed natural selection

摘要: The parameters of the spontaneous deleterious mutation process remain poorly known, despite their importance. Here, we report results a accumulation experiment performed on panmictic populations Drosophila melanogaster without any genetic manipulations. Two experimental were kept for 30 generations under relaxed natural selection. Each generation, 100 pairs formed randomly, and every fecund pair contributed son daughter to next generation. Comparison with two controls, one cryopreserved other as but long generation time, showed that number surviving offspring per female declined by 0.2% 2.0% benign harsh, competitive conditions, respectively. Thus, mutational pressure fitness may be strong depends critically conditions which is assayed.