Abstract
Natural populations of Drosophila nasuta are polymorphic for several paracentric inversions. Two non-overlapping inversions on the third chromosome (III-2 and III-35) are heterotic in both laboratory and natural populations and display an extreme case of linkage disequilibrium. Intra-and interpopulation crosses involving standard and inverted gene orders of the III-2 and 111-35 inversions were made to test if the polygenic complexes within these inversions are coadapted. The inversion heterozygotes formed by the two chromosomes derived from different localities exhibited heterosis since the viability of the heterozygotes was greater than that of either of the two homozygotes. In intrapopulation crosses, the heterozygotes were also heterotic. The present results thus indicated a lack of coadaptation among polygenic complexes within the inversions of D. nasuta. The data suggest that the heterosis produced by these linked inversions is the result of natural selection and epistasis.
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Acknowledgements We thank Dr L. E. Munstermann for comments on the manuscript. We also thank the reviewer for important suggestions. The senior author is grateful to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India for financial assistance. This work was carried out when the senior author was a doctoral student at the Center of Advanced Study in Zoology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.
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Kumar, A., Gupta, J. Heterosis and the lack of coadaptation in Drosophila nasuta. Heredity 67, 275–279 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1991.90
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1991.90