Thermal plasticity of wing spot size in Drosophila guttifera: investigating the relevance to Wingless morphogen

Thermal plasticity of animal color patterns has been studied to investigate the molecular mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity. There are examples in which the formation of color patterns is controlled by a morphogen. The extracellular distribution of a morphogen can be plastic with temperature change. Whether alteration of morphogen distribution with temperature change produces thermal plasticity in color patterns has not been studied. To address this question, polka-dotted wing spots of Drosophila guttifera, whose inducer is wingless morphogen, can be a suitable model system. In this study, we reared D. guttifera at different temperatures to test whether wing spots show thermal plasticity. We found that wing size becomes larger and spot size adjusted with wing size becomes smaller at lower temperatures. We also changed the rearing temperature in the middle of the pupal period and found that the most sensitive developmental period for wing size and spot size is different. The results suggest that developmental mechanisms for the thermal plasticity of wing size and spot size are different. We also found that the most sensitive stage for spot size was part of the pupal period including stages at which wingless is expressed in the polka-dotted pattern. Therefore, it is suggested that temperature change might affect the process of specifying spot areas by Wingless in the extracellular region.