GENETIC CONTROL OF INSECT POPULATIONS: ISOLATION AND FITNESS DETERMINATION OF AUTOSOMAL TRANSLOCATIONS

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Abstract
Recent advances in genetic insect control theory have made it important to investigate the fitness effects of, and isolation procedures for, autosomal translocations. We isolated 57 autosomal translocations inDrosophila melanogaster(Dipt., Dros.). Twenty-one were homozygous-viable and a few of these were almost as viable as wild-types. From data obtained during the isolation of these translocations it appears that those translocations whose heterozygotes produce high levels of unbalanced gametes have the same range of homozygous viabilities as others. We may infer, therefore, that it is possible to use our simple marker-free isolation method to isolate translocations with sufficiently low heterozygote and sufficiently high homozygote fitness to make population replacement practicable.This is confirmed in population cage competition experiments. It appears that between 5 and 10% of induced marker-free translocations may be useful for population replacement.