Bottleneck effect on intra- and interspecific competition in Drosophila malerkotliana.

ABSTRACT

Intra and interspecific competition experiments involving control and bottleneck lines of monomorphic and polymorphic populations of D.malerkotliana with D.nasuta nasuta have been carried out. Productivity and population size were evaluated in these lines. The results show that control line had higher relative fitness and adaptedness (productivity and population size) under both intra and interspecific competition than their respective bottleneck lines and D.nasuta nasuta. This indicates that bottlenecks have an effect on competition in D.malerkotliana. The consequence of such competition studies using control and bottleneck lines of D.malerkotliana and D.nasuta nasuta is discussed.