Mosaics and gynandromorphs in Drosophila

Abstract

Quite a number of gynandromorphs and mosaics have appeared in our experiments with the mutant stocks of Drosophila. In some of these the male side or part is maternal, and in others paternal, and in one case both paternal and maternal. For the first type Boveri's hypothesis of partial fertilization will cover the result, for the second my own hypothesis of polysperm will explain the facts. In the third case the result must be due to mitotic dislocation at some early cleavage stage.In order to test these three hypotheses, I crossed a female homozygous for the sex-linked characters, yellow body color and white eyes, to a male with the normal sex-linked allelomorphs, viz., gray body color and red eyes, but in addition the male carried a recessive non-sex-linked character, viz., ebony body color.One gynandromorph appeared among many thousand offspring. It was male on one side (partially) and female on the other. Both sides had red eyes and gray (or dark gray) body color. An analysis of this case shows that th...