The Effect of Climate Change on the Sex Outcome of Drosophila Melanogaster

Abstract

Many insects and amphibians use temperature-dependent sex determination, which is based on temperature to determine if the offspring is male or female. In the face of climate change, this method of sex determination can be threatening to populations, as the increasing temperature can cause there to be more of one sex. Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit flies, are a model organism that have been used for years to study how certain environments may impact a greater organism population. Research on the temperature’s effect on their size, viability, and genetics has been conducted, but not on how temperature may impact their sex outcome. This research project looked at how higher and lower temperatures affect the sex outcome of Drosophila melanogaster. This was done by housing groups of the fruit flies in three different incubation temperatures, one set at 13 C, another set at 25 C (the control), and another one set at 30 C. Once the adult fruit flies had eggs, they were separated, and once the eggs hatched, the number of males and females were counted. This was done for each generation. It was found that there was a higher number of females than males overall in each incubator. Additionally, the fruit flies in the 30 C incubator were the smallest, and fruit flies incubated at 13 C were the biggest. This shows that it is harder to produce males when the environment is not optimal, and that temperature variation has a major impact on the size of Drosophila melanogaster.