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Updated: Jun 15, 2025

Measuring and Altering Mating Drive in Male Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: February 15, 2017
Transformation of meiotic drive into hybrid sterility in Drosophila
Jackson Bladen1, Hyuck-Jin Nam1, Nitin Phadnis1
1School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
Abstract:
Hybrid male sterility is one of the fastest evolving intrinsic reproductive barriers between recently isolated populations. A leading explanation for the evolution of hybrid male sterility involves genomic conflicts with meiotic drivers in the male germline. There are, however, few examples directly linking meiotic drive to hybrid sterility. In this study, we report that the Sex-Ratio chromosome of Drosophila pseudoobscura, which causes X-chromosome drive within the USA subspecies, causes near-complete male sterility when it is moved into the genetic background of the Bogota subspecies. In addition, we show that this new form of sterility is genetically distinct from the sterility of F1 hybrid males in crosses between USA males and Bogota females. Our observations provide a tractable study system where noncryptic drive within species is transformed into strong hybrid sterility between very young subspecies.
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