Skip to main content
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences logoLink to Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
. 1998 Dec 22;265(1413):2399. doi: 10.1098/rspb.1998.0590

The genetic basis of oviposition preference differences between sympatric host races of the brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens)

M Sezer, R K Butlin
PMCID: PMC1689539

Abstract

We have previously analysed the genetic architecture of host-associated performance differences between stocks of the brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Homoptera: Delphacidae), derived from two host plants: cultivated rice variety TN1 and the semi-aquatic weed Leersia hexandra. It has been established that performance is influenced by a small effective number of loci (1 to 3), with dominance in the direction of the rice population. The results reported here show that, like performance, oviposition preference has a simple genetic basis, but in this case there is no evidence of directional dominance, sex linkage, non-allelic interaction or genotype–environment interaction. The simple genetic architecture of host-associated performance and oviposition preference are as expected if there was a sympatric host shift, most probably from Leersia to rice. However, contrary to the theoretical expectation from models of sympatric host-race formation, there was no detectable genetic association between the traits. The fact that individual females tend to distribute their eggs between plants may have helped to promote a host shift despite this lack of association.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (147.3 KB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Lande R. The minimum number of genes contributing to quantitative variation between and within populations. Genetics. 1981 Nov-Dec;99(3-4):541–553. doi: 10.1093/genetics/99.3-4.541. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. R'Kha S., Capy P., David J. R. Host-plant specialization in the Drosophila melanogaster species complex: a physiological, behavioral, and genetical analysis. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1991 Mar 1;88(5):1835–1839. doi: 10.1073/pnas.88.5.1835. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Zeng Z. B. Correcting the bias of Wright's estimates of the number of genes affecting a quantitative character: a further improved method. Genetics. 1992 Aug;131(4):987–1001. doi: 10.1093/genetics/131.4.987. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Zeng Z. B., Houle D., Cockerham C. C. How informative is Wright's estimator of the number of genes affecting a quantitative character? Genetics. 1990 Sep;126(1):235–247. doi: 10.1093/genetics/126.1.235. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences are provided here courtesy of The Royal Society

RESOURCES