Fig. 1

Schematic representation of the analyses performed in this work. Flies were collected from nine European populations and inbred for up to 21 generations. Desiccation tolerance was measured for all the wild-derived strains and association with geographic and environmental variables was performed to investigate the variation in desiccation tolerance across strains. Transcriptomics, genomics, and physiological assays were performed with the subset of strains from the extremes of the phenotypic distribution. Three of the genes identified in the differential gene expression analysis were functionally validated. To further analyze the differences in water loss identified, both respiration rate assays and characterization of the cuticular hydrocarbon composition was performed