Abstract
Mating in the dark between individuals carrying different eye color mutants extracted from the same natural population is shown to be random. (Previous experiments had shown that darker-eye males mate more successfully under alternating light-dark conditions). Extraction of pigments and quantitative analysis by absorption curves show that all mutants have less pigmentation than wild-type individuals; unexpectedly, darker-eye mutants do not resemble the wild-type level of pigmentation any more than light-eye single mutants. The results suggest that (1) eye pigmentation is not neccessarily related to visual ability; (2) some kind of pleiotropic effect affecting the central nervous system may be involved in the sexual behaviour of male mutants.
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Ochando, M.D. Mating behaviour and analysis of eye pigmentation of several mutants of Drosophila melanogaster. Genetica 55, 117–121 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00135105
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00135105