Heredity 84 (2000) 273±282 Received 9 June 1999, accepted 14 October 1999 Inbreeding and outbreeding depression in male courtship song characters in Drosophila montana JOUNI ASPI University of Oulu, Department of Biology, PO Box 3000, FIN-90401 Oulu, Finland In Drosophila montana, male courtship song frequency is closely associated with male courtship success and ospring survival. Other pulse characters (pulse length and cycle number) may also aect female mate choice, whereas pulse train characters (interpulse interval, pulse number and pulse train length) are not associated with these male ®tness components. Inbreeding depression in these song characters was investigated by comparing the songs of inbred and outbred ¯y strains. The average change in most song characters as a result of inbreeding was only a few percent. However, in male song frequency the average inbreeding depression was about 14%, suggesting that this song character is associated with ®tness. Outbreeding depression and the genetic architecture of song characters were investigated with interpopulation crosses and joint scaling tests. For pulse train characters the generation means show only evidence of additivity, and the existence of dominance or epistasis in these characters was strongly rejected in each case. In pulse characters the means of the F1 males were lower than the average of the parental generations. In pulse length and cycle number this dierence was attributable to dominance alone. In frequency there was outbreeding depression also in the F2 generation, suggesting a break-up of favourable epistatic gene combinations. The outbreeding depression in this character in the F1 generation was caused by dominance, and in the F2 also by duplicate epistasis between dominant decreasers. The possible role of outbreeding depression and epistasis in speciation is discussed. Keywords: courtship song, epistasis, interpopulation hybrids, shifting balance theory. Introduction usually attributed to a break-up of favourable epistatic interactions in the parental lines, or phenotype±envi- The most striking observed consequence of inbreeding ronment interaction (Thornhill, 1993; Lynch & Walsh, is the reduction of the mean phenotypic value shown 1998; Wade & Goodnight, 1998). by characters connected with ®tness, the phenomenon In Drosophila montana, some courtship song charac- known as inbreeding depression (Falconer, 1985; ters are associated with male ®tness. Courtship song in Thornhill, 1993). Under inbreeding, primary ®tness this species consists of a train of polycyclic sound pulses characters tend to exhibit very high levels of inbreeding (Fig. 1). In the wild, females prefer males that produce depression, whereas characters more remotely related to short and dense sound pulses, a combination which ®tness change normally show only low levels (Lynch & leads to a high carrier frequency (Aspi & Hoikkala, Walsh, 1998; De Rose & Ro, 1999). On the other hand, 1995). Pulse train characters, i.e. the interpulse interval, extreme outcrossing may also decrease ospring ®tness; length of a pulse train and number of pulses in a pulse for example, in crosses between distantly related popu- train, do not seem to aect female choice (Aspi & lations, F1 and/or F2 generations are sometimes less ®t Hoikkala, 1995). These results have been con®rmed by than the average of the original parental strains (Wu & Ritchie et al. (1998) under laboratory conditions by Palopoli, 1994; Lynch & Walsh, 1998). This phenom- using simulated background songs. enon is known as outbreeding depression, and it is Male courtship song frequency is also associated with another ®tness component. It is correlated with the survival rate of the male's progeny from egg to *Correspondence: Jouni Aspi, University of Oulu, Department of Biology, PO Box 3000, 90401 Oulu, Finland. Tel: 358-8-5531788; adulthood (Hoikkala et al., 1998). Accordingly, male Fax: 358-8-5531061; E-mail: jouni.aspi@oulu.® song frequency can act as a reliable indicator of male Ó 2000 The Genetical Society of Great Britain. 273 274 J. ASPI Fig. 1 Oscillograms of male courtship songs in inbred strains K12/20 and 1550/ 20 of Drosophila montana. ®tness for females. By choosing a male with courtship eastern Finland (66°25¢N, 29°0¢E). The strain 1550/20 is song frequency one standard deviation higher than the from Yukon, Alaska (61°30¢N, 159°20¢W) and the strain average in the population, a female could increase the 1263/20 from Kawasaki, Japan (34°80¢N, 139°60¢E). viability of her ospring by about 24% (Hoikkala et al., The absence of genetic variation in strains K12/20 and 1998). The other song characters are not associated with 1550/20 has been tested by using RAPD-markers. No ospring survival (Hoikkala et al., 1998). variation within strains was found by using 90 RAPD- Even though the consequences of inbreeding have been markers even though 20 of these markers appeared to studied in several ®tness-related traits (Lynch & Walsh, dier between strains (J. Aspi, unpubl. obs.). 1998; De Rose & Ro, 1999), there have been relatively As outbred ¯ies I used the males of two laboratory few studies designed to investigate the eects of inbreed- strains, 1251 and 1263, from which the inbred lines 1251/ ing on behavioural traits (but see Miller et al., 1993). 20 and 1263/20 originated (the original laboratory strain Data on outbreeding depression in interpopulation of inbred 1550 strain was no longer available). I also used hybrids, especially in animals, are also sparse (Thornhill, F1 male ospring of wild-caught males from a natural 1993). The aim of this study is to investigate possible population near the town of Kemi (from where the strain inbreeding depression and outbreeding depression in K12/20 originated). F1 males were used instead of wild- ®tness-related and non-®tness-related male courtship caught males because songs of D. montana males raised song characters in D. montana. We would expect to ®nd under laboratory conditions seem to dier from those inbreeding depression in pulse characters, especially in of wild-caught males (Aspi & Hoikkala, 1993). These male courtship song frequency, whereas there should not dierences are caused by larger phenotypic variability of be changes in the means of pulse train characters. song characters in the ®eld and also by genotype± Drosophila montana also provides a good opportunity environment interactions (Aspi & Hoikkala, 1993). to study possible outbreeding depression. This species has As the inbred strains K12/20 and 1550/20 strains were a very wide circum-Arctic distribution range (Throck- the most dissimilar ones with respect to male song morton, 1982), and thus it is possible that crosses between characters, and were from the opposite ends of the distant allopatric populations could lead to a signi®cant distribution range, I used these strains to study possible outbreeding depression in some male song characters. outbreeding depression or heterosis. There was a signi®- cant dierence in each male song character between these strains (see Table 2). Parental, and also F ,F and Materials and methods 1 2 backcross generations between parental strains, includ- ing all reciprocals, were raised under similar conditions. Flies and crosses Flies were maintained in culture bottles containing The inbred strains of D. montana used have been inbred malt medium, in continuous light at 19°C. These condi- for 20 generations by brother±sister matings to render tions approximate conditions in the wild when the ¯ies the strains homozygous. The strains originated from mate at northern latitudes. Freshly emerged ¯ies were dierent parts of the species' distribution range. The sexed under light CO2 anaesthesia and maintained in strain K12/20 is from Kemi, northern Finland (65°40¢N, food vials. Flies were used in experiments at the age of 3 23°35¢E) and the strain 1251/20 from Oulanka, north- weeks old, when sexually mature. Ó The Genetical Society of Great Britain, Heredity, 84, 273±282. INBREEDING AND OUTBREEDING DEPRESSION IN MALE SONG 275 where X is the vector of mean, additive, dominance and Song recording and analysis digenic epistatic parameters, m,[a], [d ], [aa], [ad ] and The courtship song of D. montana comprises polycyclic [dd], respectively. C is the matrix of coecients for these sound pulses (Fig. 1). The song of each male was parameters from the equation for predicted family recorded with a Sony TC-FX33 cassette recorder means, W is the diagonal matrix of weights (i.e. the and a JVC-condenser microphone. Song analysis was reciprocals of the variances of the generation means), carried out using the Signal Sound Analysis System and Y is the vector of generation means. The variances (Ó Engineering Design). I measured the lengths of the of the parameter estimates can be obtained from the pulse trains (PTL) and counted the number of pulses per diagonal elements of (C¢WC)±1 given that the model is train (PN) in oscillograms made of the songs. I also adequate (i.e. the chi-squared statistic is not signi®cant). counted the number of cycles (CN) in the fourth sound The observed generation means were ®rst tested for ®t to pulse of each pulse train, and measured the length of this models incorporating only m, m and [a], and m,[a] and pulse (pulse length, PL) and the distance from the [d ], successively. The expected means of the six genera- beginning of this pulse to the beginning of the next one tions were calculated using the parameter estimates, the (interpulse interval, IPI). Carrier frequency of the song goodness-of-®t of the observed generation means was (FRE) was measured from Fourier spectra. For statis- tested with the chi-squared statistic, and the signi®cance tical analysis, PL, FRE, IPI and PTL were transformed of each parameter was tested by using a t-test (Mather & to natural logarithms. Jinks, 1982; Kearsey & Pooni, 1996). The more complex Only one pulse train per male was analysed because the model was applied only if the chi-squared test revealed repeatabilities of most of the song characters have been that the simpler model was inadequate.