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Updated: Aug 6, 2026

Isolation of Drosophila melanogaster Testes
Published on: May 13, 2011
Sex-ratio segregation distortion associated with reproductive isolation in Drosophila
1Department of Developmental, Cell, and Molecular Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Abstract:
Sex-ratio distortion is the most common form of non-Mendelian segregation observed in natural populations. It may occur even more frequently than direct observations suggest, because the dysgenic population consequences of a biased sex ratio are expected to result in the rapid evolution of suppressors, resulting in suppressed or "cryptic" segregation distortion. Here we report evidence for cryptic sex-ratio distortion that was discovered by introgressing segments of the genome of Drosophila mauritiana into the genome of Drosophila simulans. The autosomal suppressor of sex-ratio distortion, which is also associated with a reduction in hybrid male fertility, has been genetically localized to a region smaller than 80-kb pairs in chromosome 3.
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