Environmental specificity and evolution in Drosophila-bacteria symbiosis

Abstract

Environmentally acquired microbial symbionts could contribute to host adaptation to local adaptation like vertically transmitted symbionts do. This scenario necessitates symbionts to have different effects in different environments. In Drosophila melanogaster , communities of extracellular bacterial symbionts vary largely among environments, which could be due to variable effects on phenotype. We investigated this idea with four bacterial strains isolated from the feces of a D. melanogaster lab strain, and tested their effects in two environments: the environment of origin (i.e. the laboratory medium) and a new one (i.e. fresh fruit with live yeast). All bacterial effects on larval and adult..