Deleterious Genes in Wild Drosophila melanogaster from Israel

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Abstract
A sample of 243 second chromosomes of wild P. melanogaster from Israel was analyzed for its deleterious gene content by backcrossing to the Cy L/Pm stock, and was found to contain 38.68% lethal and semi-lethal genes. 202 chromosomes out of this total were collected in autumn in the Jerusalem area, and for this more uniform sample the content of lethals and semilethals was 41.09 percent. This concentration of deleterious recessives exceeds most of the values recorded by Dubinin for Russian D. melanogaster, and is similar to his highest exceptional value; it ranges among the lower percentages observed by Ives in populations of the Eastern United States. Hence, in spite of the semi-arid climate, the size of the breeding population of D. melanogaster in Israel may be comparable to that of certain areas in the humid Eastern United States.