Author : Anami Ahuja, Ranjeet S Tanwar,Pankaj K. Tyagi,Vikas Sarsar, Mahipal Paudwal, Pushpander Kumar

Our study was aimed at studying the local adaptation in life history traits of wild type Drosophila melanogaster in extreme conditions of humidity. The control line was designated as SC (starvation control) and the line which was starvation resistant was designated as ST (starvation tolerant). For obtaining ST lines about 100 flies were placed in empty bottle. The cotton plug for bottle was saturated with water and thus flies were held in a high humidity environment in constant proximity to moisture. The average dry weight of four independent SC male line was 0.267mg while SC female lines weighed 0.530mg, ST males weighed 0.283mg and ST female weighed 0.573mg.The statistical differences among SC& ST males lines was: F value=16.484,P value=0.007 . The statistical differences in SC& ST females was:

F value=153.447 P value=0.000.

Key words: Drosophila melanogaster ,local adaptation, humidity, life history traits