Athanasios Metaxakis, Linda Partridge

Dietary restriction (DR) can result in lifespan-extension and improved function and health during ageing. Although the impact of DR on lifespan and health has been established in a variety of organisms, most DR experiments are carried out on laboratory strains that have often undergone adaptation to laboratory conditions. The effect of DR on animals recently derived from wild populations is rarely assessed. We measured the DR response of four populations of Drosophila melanogaster within two generations of collection from the wild. All populations responded to DR with an increase in lifespan and a decrease in female fecundity, similarly to a control, laboratory-adapted strain. These effects of DR are thus not a result of adaptation to laboratory conditions, and reflect the characteristics of natural populations.