A Novel System of Fertility Rescue in Drosophila Hybrids Reveals a Link Between Hybrid Lethality and Female Sterility

A Novel System of Fertility Rescue in Drosophila Hybrids Reveals a Link Between Hybrid Lethality and Female Sterility

Daniel A. Barbash^a,b and Michael Ashburner^a
^a Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EH, United Kingdom and
^b Section of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis, California 95616

Corresponding author: Daniel A. Barbash, Storer Hall, University of California, Davis, CA 95616., dabarbash{at}ucdavis.edu (E-mail)

Communicating editor: T. C. KAUFMAN

Hybrid daughters of crosses between Drosophila melanogasterfemales and males from the D. simulans species clade are fullyviable at low temperature but have agametic ovaries and arethus sterile. We report here that mutations in the D. melanogastergene Hybrid male rescue (Hmr), along with unidentified polymorphicfactors, rescue this agametic phenotype in both D. melanogaster/D.simulans and D. melanogaster/D. mauritiana F₁ female hybrids.These hybrids produced small numbers of progeny in backcrosses,their low fecundity being caused by incomplete rescue of oogenesisas well as by zygotic lethality. F₁ hybrid males from thesecrosses remained fully sterile. Hmr⁺ is the first Drosophilagene shown to cause hybrid female sterility. These results alsosuggest that, while there is some common genetic basis to hybridlethality and female sterility in D. melanogaster, hybrid femalesare more sensitive to fertility defects than to lethality.

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