Publisher: Oxford University Press For The American Genetic Association Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 0375373 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1465-7333 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00221503 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Hered Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: New York, NY : Oxford University Press For The American Genetic Association
Original Publication: Baltimore [etc.] American Genetic Assn.

Temperature* , Houseflies*/genetics , Genetics, Population* , Chromosomes, Insect*/genetics , Y Chromosome*/genetics, Animals ; Male ; Female ; Seasons ; United States ; Sex Chromosomes/genetics ; Sex Determination Processes

Sex chromosomes often differ between closely related species and can even be polymorphic within populations. Species with multifactorial sex determination segregate for multiple different sex-determining loci within populations, making them uniquely informative of the selection pressures that drive the evolution of sex chromosomes. The house fly (Musca domestica) is a model species for studying multifactorial sex determination because male-determining genes have been identified on all six of the chromosomes, which means that any chromosome can be a "proto-Y." Natural populations of house flies also segregate for a recently derived female-determining locus, meaning house flies also have a proto-W chromosome. The different proto-Y chromosomes are distributed along latitudinal clines on multiple continents, their distributions can be explained by seasonality in temperature, and they have temperature-dependent effects on physiological and behavioral traits. It is not clear, however, how the clinal distributions interact with the effect of seasonality on the frequencies of house fly proto-Y and proto-W chromosomes across populations. To address this question, we measured the frequencies of house fly proto-Y and proto-W chromosomes across nine populations in the United States of America. We confirmed the clinal distribution along the eastern coast of North America, but it is limited to the eastern coast. In contrast, the annual mean daily temperature range predicts proto-Y chromosome frequencies across the entire continent. Our results therefore suggest that temperature heterogeneity can explain the distributions of house fly proto-Y chromosomes in a way that does not depend on the cline.
(© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The American Genetic Association. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.)