Biology subjects

Gadkari, C.

Publications and source records attributed to Gadkari, C..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Exposure to traffic noise can impact multiple insect fitness components

Noise pollution is a significant environmental stressor that affects organisms physiology and behavior. Due to its wide occurrence and range of component frequencies, traffic noise is a major culprit in this context. Although well-studied in vertebrate systems, the effects of traffic noise on invertebrates remain relatively less explored. This study uses Drosophila melanogaster as a model system to examine the impact of traffic noise on insects. Exposure to traffic noise reduced fecundity in both freshly mated and pre-mated flies, with a more pronounced effect in the former. Additionally, traffic noise increased mating latency but did not affect mating duration. The impact on locomotor activity was sex-specific: while the females remained unaffected, the male flies showed reduced activity regardless of their mating status. Desiccation resistance remained unaffected in both sexes. These findings indicate that traffic noise can decrease fitness in Drosophila melanogaster, which aligns with some (but not all) previous observations on other insect species. The long-term ecological implications of such noise include potential disruptions in insect-mediated ecosystem services, which can threaten the overall ecological balance. Summary StatementTraffic noise impairs fruit-flys fecundity, extends mating latency, and reduces male locomotor activity, suggesting that such noise can potentially reduce fitness and risk insect-driven ecosystem services.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Experimental evolution of Drosophila without its microbiome

In single-generation experiments, microbiome removal often affects multiple host traits. However, relatively little is understood about the long-term implications of living in a microbe-free environment. To address this question, we evolved four replicate laboratory populations of Drosophila melanogaster without microbes and compared their traits with corresponding control populations that were reared with microbiota. This comparison was done under two assay environments: with-microbes and microbe-free. Prior single-generation experiments on our populations had revealed that microbiota removal significantly affects multiple traits, which suggested that the flies were under strong selection pressure to adapt to the absence of microbes. However, contrary to our expectations, the selected populations underwent very modest changes even after 54-57 generations of selection. Moreover, the magnitude of change in trait values across the with- and without- microbe environments was less for the selected populations than for the controls. RNA-Seq on one of the evolutionary replicates revealed that compared to the control, some anti-microbial peptides (AMPs) in the selected population were up-regulated, while several heat shock proteins (HSPs) were down-regulated. These results suggest that robust host-microbiome integrations on short timescales can nevertheless be labile on longer timescales. We situate these results in the context of the "evolutionary addiction hypothesis" and the "hygiene hypothesis".

evolutionary biology↗