Characterization of defects in adult germline development and oogenesis of sterile and rescued female hybrids in crosses between Drosophila simulans and Drosophila melanogaster

Crosses between Drosophila melanogaster and D. simulans normally result in progeny that are either inviable or sterile. Recent discovery of strains that rescue these inviability and sterility phenotypes has made it possible to study the developmental basis of reproductive isolation between these two species in greater detail. By producing both rescued and unrescued hybrids and examining the protein product staining patterns of genes known to be involved in early germline development and gametogenesis, we have found that in crosses between D. simulans and D. melanogaster, hybrid female sterility results from the improper control of primordial germline proliferation, germline stem cell maintenance, and cystoblast formation and differentiation during early oogenesis. Rescued hybrid females are fertile, yet they generally have lower amounts of adult germline from the outset and show a premature degeneration of adult germline cells with age. In addition, older rescued hybrid females also exhibit mutant egg phenotypes associated with defects in dorso-ventral patterning which may result from the improper partitioning of cytoplasmic factors during early oogenesis that could stem from the early defect. Although a variety of germline and oogenic defects are described for the hybrid females, all of them can potentially result from the same underlying primary defect. Hybrid males from these same crosses, on the other hand, have no detectable germline in adult reproductive tissues, even when hybrid sterility rescue strains are used, indicating that male sterility and female sterility stem from distinctly different developmental defects.