TEST FOR SELECTION ON POLYMORPHIC ISOZYME GENES USING THE POPULATION CAGE METHOD

Terumi Mukai ¹ and Tsuneyuki Yamazaki ¹

¹ Department of Biology, Kyushu University 33, Fukuoka 812, Japan

Published experimental data of several species of Drosophila using the population cage method were reexamined. The authors of these works have claimed that selection operates on polymorphic isozyme genes. Since selection coefficients (s) estimated by us for the above data, assuming overdominance, or for some cases, additivity between alleles, were too large (s > 0.1), we conclude that these experimental results do not reflect the effects of the single loci in question; rather, we suggest that careful experimentation and judgment are required for testing with the population cage method whether or not selection actually operates on single genes.