Latitudinal Clines in Diapause Onset and Circadian Clock Characteristics in Drosophila littoralis and Drosophila montana.

Authors

Giulia Manoli, Pekka Lankinen, Anneli Hoikkala, Charlotte Helfrich-Förster

Published in

Journal of biological rhythms. Pages 7487304261461316. Jul 20, 2026. Epub Jul 20, 2026.

Abstract

Drosophila littoralis and Drosophila montana are two widespread species of the virilis group that occur at latitudes between approximately 40°N and 70°N. To survive the winter, they undergo a photoperiodically controlled diapause triggered by the decreasing photoperiod in late summer to autumn. Previous studies have shown that the critical photoperiod at which diapause is triggered depends on latitude. Fly populations living at high latitudes have a longer critical photoperiod than populations living at low latitudes, meaning that they enter diapause earlier. It is not yet fully understood how fly species measure photoperiod, but there is increasing evidence that the circadian clock is involved in this process. A recent study on D. littoralis has shown that the properties of the circadian clock change with latitude in parallel with the latitudinal changes in critical photoperiod, supporting this hypothesis. In D. montana, latitudinal clines have been observed in several diapause-related traits that have not yet been studied in D. littoralis. However, it is not known whether D. montana populations exhibit similar latitudinal clines in circadian clock traits as D. littoralis. Here, we compare the circadian clock and diapause traits of D. littoralis strains from different latitudes in Europe and D. montana populations from different latitudes in North America, using previously published data and determining missing parameters. We show that the two species exhibit similar latitudinal clines in circadian clock traits such as rhythm strength and timing of evening activity, as well as in diapause-related traits such as critical photoperiod, critical temperature, post-reproductive diapause and stability of photoperiodic time-measurement, with minor differences in the correlation between latitude and the expression pattern of the neuropeptide pigment-dispersing factor. Overall, our findings give new insight into the role of the circadian clock in measuring photoperiods that are essential for diapause induction in both Drosophila species.

PMID:
42478166
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 21 Jul 2026.

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