Abstract
The well-known medionigra polymorphism in the scarlet tiger moth, Panaxia dominula, occupies an unique position in the history of ecological genetics. Year to year changes in phenotype frequency at the Cothill (Oxfordshire) colony were too great to be explained by random genetic drift, and were used as evidence for selection in a prolonged and heated debate between, on one side, E. B. Ford and R. A. Fisher, and on the other, Sewall Wright. Here we report experiments which clearly demonstrate that expression at the medionigra locus is largely determined by temperature. Since the genotype is not necessarily recognizable from the phenotype, the long series of field scored samples from Cothill do not accurately record changes in the medionigra allele frequency from year to year. Hence interpretation of the data as evidence for selection is invalid.
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