Why development time matters: temperature influences plasticity while nutritional stress reshapes selection and evolutionary potential

Low-calorie diet reshapes selection and boosts evolvability of development time in Drosophila melanogaster, while temperature drives the largest plasticity (4–5× longer at 14°C).

• Why it matters: Direct estimates of how selection on development time changes across combined stressors are scarce, limiting predictions of how populations respond to environmental change.
• What they did: The study reared 68 full-sibling families at 14°C vs 28°C and on standard vs low-calorie diets, then measured development time, body size, egg-to-adult viability, and productivity.
• The result: Diet—not temperature—altered directional selection: faster development increased fitness on standard diet at both temperatures, but this advantage disappeared on low-calorie diet; low-calorie also increased evolvability of development time ~10–16-fold and showed near-zero genetic correlations across diets.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.