Meeting Abstract
Environmental temperature strongly affects the physiology of individuals, and so thermoregulation is vital for maximizing an individual’s fitness. Ectotherms largely rely on two mechanisms to thermoregulate: while many ectotherms have a limited ability to ameliorate the effects of extreme temperature physiologically, many can behaviorally thermoregulate by moving to more ideal temperatures. As such, habitat use and behavioral patterns can be largely affected by thermal preference functions, and we can expect the development of thermal preferences to be dependent on a variety of genetic and environmental factors. For instance, biogeographical patterns among or within species can be expected to shape individual thermal preferences, allowing for avoidance of extreme temperatures or maximizing time spent at physiologically optimal ones. The house fly Musca domestica is an ideal system to examine how genotype and environment interact to shape thermal preferences. In replicated natural systems, we observe a latitudinal cline varying in the male-determining Y chromosome. Specifically, males from cooler, northern populations carry the male-determining gene on the Y chromosome, whereas those from warmer, southern populations carry the gene on the third chromosome. Here, we tested whether chromosomal location of the male-determining gene and rearing temperature affected both mean thermal preference and the breadth of thermal preference, measured as the coefficient of variation of individual-level thermal preference. The results obtained from this study will help elucidate the mechanisms shaping the observed latitudinal cline within M. domestica, as well as provide a greater understanding of how genotype and the environment interact to shape the development of physiologically relevant behaviors.
