Effects of Short-term Spontaneous Mutation Accumulation for Life History Traits in Grape Phylloxera, Daktulosphaira vitifoliae

Mutation is the source of all genetic variation, but rate of input and effects of new mutations for phenotypic traits related to fitness and the role they play in the maintenance of genetic variation are still subject to controversy. These parameters are important in models of the evolution of sex and recombination, the persistence of asexual populations, and the extinction of small populations. Most estimates have come from a few model organisms. Here, mutation accumulation experiments were conducted with three clones of grape phylloxera, Daktulosphaira vitifoliae Fitch, a gall forming herbivore and pest of grapes, to estimate the rate of input and effects of spontaneous mutation on life history traits. This is perhaps the first such experiment using a non-model organism of economic importance. Significant heritable genetic variation accrued in one of three sets of lines for one of four traits measured, and deleterious effects of mutation were found for two of four traits in two of the three sets of lines. Estimates of the parameters by the Bateman–Mukai (BM) method were within the range found in previous studies but at the lower end for genomic mutation rate, U 0.023 and mutational variance, V _M 0.0003, the upper end for average heterozygous effect, , of –0.11, and on the order of previous estimates for mutational heritability, h _M 0.007. Under a model of equal effects of mutations, maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of U were slightly higher, and of lower, than the BM estimates. Support limits were too large to provide much confidence in the ML estimates, however, and models of mutational effects assuming a gamma distribution of effects under different values of the shape parameter, , could not be distinguished though likelihoods tended to be lower at lower values of (more leptokurtic). Rapid accumulation of deleterious mutations suggest that for many pest species, adaptive response under agricultural conditions may depend more on the standing variation derived from introductions than new mutation.