Journal of Heredity Advance Access originally published online on June 21, 2006
Journal of Heredity 2006 97(5):538; doi:10.1093/jhered/esl002
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Book Reviews |
The Evolutionary Biology of Flies
The Evolutionary Biology of FliesEdited by David K. Yeates and Brian M. Wiegmann.
Columbia University Press, New York. 2005. ix + 430 pp. $94.
Flies and Their Place in the World
It is a pleasure to read a collection of papers that puts a group of organisms that we think we know well in a larger perspective. When our horizons are thus broadened, surprises can often result, and new experiments can suggest themselves.
Drosophila geneticists tend to have a narrow view of the life and activities of the flies on which they work. Parts of my youth were spent wandering along forest trap lines, catching Drosophila as they came to the traps to feed in the fading light of evening. But what, I wondered, were the flies doing the rest of the time? My mentor Theodosius Dobzhansky used to say that it was clear that 10% of his favorite flies, Drosophila pseudoobscura, spent their time feeding on oak slime fluxes, but the other 90% must have appeared through spontaneous generation!
This collection of papers attempts to fill at least some of such lacunas in our knowledge about flies, not just Drosophila but the many other 2-winged flies. Some papers deal with the phylogenetic history of flies in general, others with their genomes and how their surprisingly varied sex chromosomes originated. Others deal with ecological dimensions, in particular, how flies and plants have coevolved and the role of flies in complex terrestrial ecosystems. Still others investigate the biogeographic distribution of flies, and one contribution examines the flies' many different mating systems and how they evolved.
Rudolf Meier provides some important history, reminding us of the central role played by dipteran flies in the development of Willi Hennig's central insights into phylogenetic systematics. The editors themselves, in their contribution, draw on Hennig's insights to present the growing information that the Diptera are indeed monophyletic. Two-winged flies evolved only once. Nonetheless, they find that the details of this monophyletic tree are still inconsistent. As new DNA information becomes available, particularly about groups of flies that have been little studied as yet, this situation will change.
At the level of development, certainly the fastest moving of Drosophila studies, information is being organized and presented in numerous Web sites that researchers depend on for up-to-date information. DeSalle lists the Web sites (a list fated to be almost instantaneously obsolete) and shows how the detailed studies in Drosophila melanogaster are now informing similar studies in other Diptera. The origin of genes that seem to be unique to some of the Diptera, such as bicoid, can now be studied in great detail.
Ashburner surveys the changes in Drosophila genomes in detail. His paper is packed with useful information, including a vivid description of the immense genes on the Y chromosome of Drosophila hydei that require a day to be transcribed. Kidwell examines the evolution of the many families of transposable elements in Drosophila. It is now clear that retrotransposons are not simply degenerate retroviruses and that retroviruses can sometimes arise from retrotransposons like Lazarus rising from the dead. She also traces how transposable elements can jump the gap between species, with the help of parasites.
Davies and Roderick examine sex determination, and I learn to my surprise that some Diptera have not yet embraced those new-fangled sex chromosomes and still depend on environmental cues such as temperature to determine sex. Both heterogametic males and heterogametic females are found in the Diptera. It has been observed that in species with heterogametic females, the females tend to be larger than the males, whereas in those with heterogametic males, the males tend to be larger. The authors do not explore, however, the possible role of Bateman's principle and of sexual selection in driving these fascinating relationships.
Labandeira introduces us to the explosive coevolution of Diptera and the plants on which they feed and reminds us of the remarkable fact that the Diptera have the widest variety of mouth parts of any insect group. The biogeography of the Diptera has been aided by a growing number of fossil discoveries of these fragile creatures. Wilkinson and Johns explore the role of sexual selection in the speciation of this order of insects and suggest that Diptera other than Drosophila will prove to be a treasure trove of organisms in which the evolution of prezygotic isolating mechanisms can be followed in detail.
The book provides an excellent survey of this remarkable and diverse group of insects and should be useful reading for Drosophologists. Readers will be glad to have the opportunity to broaden their perspective and to illuminate the evolution of their favorite organism with an understanding of how similar processes have taken place in other branches of the dipteran family tree.
Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive # 0116, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116
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