Rapid changes in wing size and shape during the transition to laboratory conditions in a Neotropical drosophilid

Wing size in Drosophila sturtevanti shows heterogeneous responses in F1 but a consistent reduction across all 12 isofemale lines by F10 after laboratory establishment.

• Why it matters: Rapid phenotypic change in laboratory populations can reveal how environment and genetic variation interact, but the underlying processes are hard to disentangle.
• What they did: Using geometric morphometrics, wing size and shape were compared between field-collected males (Field) and descendants from 12 independently founded isofemale lines in F1 and F10.
• The result: Wing shape changed significantly in every line between Field and F1 and between F1 and F10, with total shape variance increasing from Field to F1 and between-line variance rising from F1 to F10.