Since only half of the daughters of the lethal-bearing females carry the lethal, the stock can be maintained by breeding daughters separately in each generation to insure obtaining one which repeats the 2:1 ratio. There is, however, a much more advantageous way of carrying on the stock—one that also confirms the sufficiency of the theory.
In carrying on a stock of a lethal, advantage can be taken of linkage. A lethal factor has a definite locus in the chromosome; if, then, a lethal-bearing female is crossed to a male of another stock with a recessive character whose factor lies in the X chromosome very close to the lethal factor, half the daughters will have lethal in one X and the recessive in the other. The lethal-bearing females can be picked out from their sisters by the fact that they give a 2:1 sex-ratio, and by the fact that nearly all the sons that do survive show the recessive character. If such females are tested by breeding to the recessive males, then the daughters which do not show the recessive carry the lethal, except in the few cases of crossing-over. Thus in each generation the normal females are crossed to the recessive males with the assurance that the lethal will not be lost. If instead of the single recessive used in this fashion, a double recessive of such a sort that one recessive lies on each side of the lethal is used, then in each generation the females which show neither recessive will almost invariably contain the lethal, since a double cross-over is required to remove the lethal.
It is true that females carrying two different lethals might arise and not die, because the injurious effect of each lethal would be dominated by its allelomorph in the other X chromosome. Such females can not be obtained by combining two existing lethals, since lethal males do not survive. They can occur only through a new lethal arising through mutation in the homologous chromosome of a female that already carries one lethal. Rare as such an event must be, it has occurred in our cultures thrice. The presence of a female of this kind will be at once noticed by the fact that she produces no sons, or very rarely one, giving in consequence extraordinary sex-ratios. The rare appearance of a son from such a female can be accounted for in the following way: If crossing-over occurs between her X chromosomes the result will be that one X will sometimes contain two lethals, the other none. The latter, if it passes into a male, will lead to the development of a normal individual. The number of such males depends on the distance apart of the two lethals in the chromosome. There is a crucial test of this hypothesis of two lethals in females giving extraordinary ratios. This test has been applied to the cases in which such females were found, by Rawls (1913), by Morgan (1914c), and again by Stark (1915), and it has been found to confirm the explanation. The daughters of
such a female should all (excepting a rare one due to crossing-over) give 2:1 ratios, because each daughter must get one or the other X chromosome of her mother, that is, one or the other lethal. Although the mother was fertilized by a normal male, every daughter is heterozygous for one or the other of the lethal factors. The daughters of the two-lethal females differ from the daughters of the one-lethal female in that the former mother, as just stated, gives all lethal-bearing daughters; the latter transmits her lethal to only half of her daughters.
INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON THE REALIZATION OF TWO SEX-LINKED CHARACTERS.
The need of a special environment in order that certain mutant characters may express themselves has been shown for abnormal abdomen (Morgan, 1912d, 1915b) and for reduplication of the legs (Hoge, 1915). In a third type, club, described here (page [69]), the failure of the unfolding of the wing which occurs in about 20 per cent of the flies is also without much doubt an environmental effect, but as yet the particular influence that causes the change is unknown.
A very extensive series of observations has been made on the character called abnormal abdomen. In pure cultures kept moist with abundance of fresh food all the flies that hatch for the first few days have the black bands of the abdomen obliterated or made faint and irregular. As the bottles get dry and the food becomes scarce the flies become more and more normal, until at last they are indistinguishable from the normal flies. Nevertheless these normal-looking flies will give rise in a suitable environment to the same kind of flies as the very abnormal flies first hatched. By breeding from the last flies of each culture, and in dry cultures, flies can be bred from normal ancestors for several generations, and then by making the conditions favorable for the appearance of the abnormal condition, the flies will be as abnormal as though their ancestors had always been abnormal. Here, then, is a character that is susceptible to the variations in the environment, yet whatever the realized condition of the soma may be, that condition has no effect whatever on the nature of the germ-plasm. A more striking disproof of the theory of the inheritance of acquired characters would be hard to find.
A demonstration is given in this instance of the interaction between a given genotypic constitution and a special environment. The character abnormal is a sex-linked dominant. Therefore, if an abnormal male is mated to a wild female the daughters are heterozygous for abnormal, while the sons, getting their X chromosome from their mother, are entirely normal. In a wet environment all the daughters are abnormal and the sons normal. As the culture dries out the daughters' color becomes normal in appearance. But while the sons
will never transmit abnormality to any of their descendants in any environment, the daughters will transmit (if bred to normal males) in a suitable environment their peculiarity to half of their daughters and to half of their sons. The experiment shows convincingly that the abnormal abdomen appears in a special environment only in those flies that have a given genotypic constitution.
As the cultures dry out the abnormal males are the first to change over to normal, then the heterozygous females, and lastly the homozygous females. It is doubtful if any far-reaching conclusion can be drawn from this series, because the first and second classes differ from each other not only in the presence of one or of two factors for abnormal, but also by the absence in the first case (male) of an entire X chromosome with its contained factors. The second and third classes differ from each other only by the abnormal factor.