Correlation between circadian and photoperiodic latitudinal clines in Drosophila littoralis

Insects can survive harsh conditions, including Arctic winters, by entering a hormonally induced state of dormancy, known as diapause. Diapause is triggered by environmental cues such as shortening of the photoperiod (lengthening of the night). The time of entry into diapause depends on the latitude of the insects’ habitat, and this applies even within a species: populations living at higher latitudes enter diapause earlier in the year than populations living at lower latitudes. A long-standing question in biology is whether the internal circadian clock, which governs daily behaviour and serves as a reference clock to measure night length, shows similar latitudinal adaptations. To address this question, we examined the onset of diapause and various behavioural and molecular parameters of the circadian clock in the cosmopolitan fly, Drosophila littoralis, a species distributed throughout Europe from the Black Sea (41°N) to arctic regions (69°N). We found that all clock parameters examined showed the same correlation with latitude as the critical night length for diapause induction. We conclude that the circadian clock has adapted to the latitude and that this may result in the observed latitudinal differences in the onset of diapause.