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A test of sexual isolation in Drosophila

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2009

Forbes W. Robertson
Forbes W. Robertson
Affiliation:
Institute of Animal Genetics, Edinburgh
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1. A test is described for the development of sexual isolation between a wild and a derived population of D. melanogaster adapted to a new diet, containing EDTA. Other experiments had shown that adaptation to the new diet involved genetic changes in all chromosomes. Also fitness was reversed on the alternative diets under crowded competitive conditions.

2. In three replicated trials flies from each population were used to establish paired cage populations, supplied with the medium to which each was adapted, and the pairs of cages were joined to allow restricted immigration between them. The experiment was run for about twenty-five generations.

3. After fifteen and twenty-five generations, flies were collected from each cage to provide eggs which were cultured on the alternative diets to determine how far the members of pairs of populations differed from each other and from the foundation population. There were striking differences between the sub-populations and the parent populations, attributable to immigration between the former. Judged by the differences in performance between the sub-populations, genetic differences persisted but these were minor compared with the differences between the parent populations.

4. Tests of preferential mating on the part of flies from paired sub-populations were entirely negative.

5. Fourteen generations of selection for positive assortative mating failed to provide evidence of sexual isolation between the two basic populations, adapted to different diets.

6. From these and other experiments it is inferred that sympatric divergence is improbable in a species like D. melanogaster.

Type
Research Article
Information
Genetics Research , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , September 1966 , pp. 181 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

References

REFERENCES

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