Intersexuality in Lymantria dispar (L.): a further reassessment

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Abstract
In Lymantria dispar Goldschmidt stated that the most extreme form of intersexuality was found in the offspring of the cross between a ‘very weak’ female from the island of Hokkaido and a ‘strong’ male from the mainland of Japan. This produced only normal-looking males and Goldschmidt postulated that half of these were completely transformed females. In recent studies using this same cross we confirm a big excess of males but the sex chromatin technique has shown that all the male insects tested either as larvae or adults were negative for the heteropyknotic body, i. e. were chromosomally male. The only positive insects were two normal-looking females from one of the broods. We think it much more likely that both Goldschmidt’s findings and the present ones result from the Haldane effect and that the female embryos or tiny larvae died because of ‘genic imbalance’.

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