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Research Notes
May 1977
Nevertheless, a few such cases are known in D. melanogaster. Glass (1933) reported certain rearrangements of bw which expressed the bw phenotype, variegated, when in heterozygous combination with bW+, the usually dominant allele. Similarly, Stern and Kodani (1955) found s~ecific rearrangements of ci which expressed a variegated ci phenotype when combined with ci. In the course of studies of position effects of the h locus (Genetics, in press), an attempt was made to produce rearrangements of h which would express position effect phenotypes when combined with h+. Homozygous se h males were X-rayed with 5000-7000 r acute radiation, at rates of approximately 105 r/minute. These males were mated immediately to wildtype tested virgins. The resulting Fi, all with non-sepia eyes, were scored for the presence of such hairs as would indicate a position effect of h. Careful screening was accomplished on the scutellum, mesopleurae, and wings of 47,694 such Fi, with negative results; all appeared wild-type. From a similar attempt, Stern (1944) reported comparable results from a screening of 17,922 progeny. Thus, a total of 65,616 offspring from the above cross have been screened with no positive results. It would appear that, unlike ci and bw, it is extremely difficult or impossible to produce by rearrangement a situation wherein the recessive mutant h allele assumes 'dominance' over the wild-type.
References: Glass, H.B. 1933, J. Genet. 28:69-112; Spofford, J.B. 1976, In: The
Genetics of Drosophila, vol. 1, M. Ashburner and E. Novitski, eds., in press; Stern, C. 1944 DIS 18:56; Stern, C. and M. Kodani 1955, Genetics 40:343-373. (Supported by PHS grant 2Tl-GM-367-06 to the Dept. of Genetics, University of California, Berkeley, and Brigham Young University Research Grant 115-77-304.)
The mating success of male yellow D. melanogaster with wild-type females has been shown to be reduced (Bastock, M., 1956 Evol. 10:421439). Barker (1962 Gen. 47:623-640) has studied the effects of age, sex ratio, density and mating period on the success of yellow males. As temperature and lighting regime have strong influences on metabolism, their effects on the mating success of yellow males were examined in order to determine if an altered general metabolism might be a cause of their behavioral
deficiencies.
An inbred wild-type and yellow strain of D. melanogaster were used in these experiments. In each test sixty virgin three day old females and males were placed in a 200 mI. bottle containing 40 mI. of propionic acid medium. After 5 days the flies were etherised, the males discarded and the females placed singly in vials to determine whether they had been inseminated. The conditions used are set out in the table:
Light Regime ~12 hr: 12
hr)
LL
LL
LL
LD
15
20
88'70 88'70
0'70
25
77'70
25
84'70
47'
90'70
0'70
66'70
100'70
070
0'70
070
0'70
1.7' 1.7'
1.770
The only significant effect was due to the decreased maing success of wild-type at 150C versus wild-type at 200C (p ~ 0.005) and versus yellow at 15 C (p ~ 0.005), for which no explanation can be offered. There also appears to be a general trend for increased mating success under alternating 12 hour light:dark conditions (5 of 5 comparisons). As Hardeland (1972 Anim. Behav. 20:170-174) has shown that D. melanogaster has the peak of its courting rhythm in the dark, this may indicate that a high concentration of courtship activity is beneficial for mating success and that courting pairs stimulate each other. However, this point is equivocal, as others (Averhoff, W.W. and Richardson, R.H., Behav. Gen. 1974 4:207-