9402642 Worthen This award is under the International Junior Investigator and Postdoctoral Fellows Program, which enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twelve months of research abroad at research centers of proven excellence. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a six-month postdoctoral research visit by Dr. Wade B. Worthen of Furman University to work with Dr. Klaus Rohde at the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia. Their research will directly test the effects of temperature on the speed of selection and rate of mutation using Drosophila melanogaster flies as a model system. There are two aspects to their plan, the first is selection and mutation experiments in the lab and second, a field and literature survey of latitudinal changes in drosophilid diversity and generation time. The focus of the research will be several lab experiments selecting for various traits in Drosophila melanogaster under different temperature treatments. These experiments will determine whether populations at higher temperatures have higher mutation rates, shorter generation times, and more rapid responses to selection than populations at lower temperatures. This research is likely to make an important contribution to the study of biodiversity and will expand what we know about a critical determinant of a primary global pattern ***
