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Summary The digoxigenin‐labelled oligonucleotide (GTG)5 was used as a multilocus probe to detect hypervariable microsatellites in roe deer DNA digested with Hae III. The resulting fingerprints of 24 animals belonging to four subpopulations were characterized with regard to within‐subpopulation as well as between‐subpopulation similarity. The mean number of polymorphic fragments was 20 and the average band‐sharing rate for unrelated animals 0.27. A mean probability of 91.5% for a fragment to be present in the heterozygous state was evaluated and the probabilities of identical band patterns in unrelated individuals were estimated to be in the range 1.3 X 10‐16 ‐ 2.5 X 10‐18. Though band‐sharing rates of animals belonging to different subpopulations (range 0.18‐0.24) were lower than those of within‐subpopulations, several measures of population subdivision and the genetic distance do not reveal a striking differentiation of the subpopulations studied.

In the natrual populations +Tüb, +Prov, and +Rov, similar AdhF allele frequencies occur (qF = 0.11, 0.18, AND 0.08, respectively). However, there is a discrepancy in that the AdhF allele in +Tüb is closely linked to the lethal factor l(2)Stm, which reduces relative fitness of the F phenotype to zero. In spite of this, polymorphism is maintained also in +Tüb, because the heterozygotes are superior to the homozygous S type (relative fitness = 0.88). Under laboratory culture conditions, in +Tüb the relative fitness of the S genotype further decreases to 0.6. After outcrossing the lethal factor, relative fitnesses for S, FS, and F become 0.6, 1, and 0.48, respectively, implying that fitness for S remains the same. Relative values for S, FS, and F in +Prov, not affected by the lethal factor, are calculated by the maximum average fitness method to be 1, 1.2, and 0.2 under the assumption that heterozyglous FS are similarly superior to S as in the natural +Tüb population and all allele frequencies found are stable equilibrium values.

The ontogeny of allozyme patterns has been studied in embryos ofDrosophilamelanogaster, which are doubly heterozygous for alleles specifying the slow and fast forms of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and α-glycerophosphate dehydrogenase (GPDH). The ontogeny of esterase-2 was studied in embryos and young larvae of the flour mothEphestia kühniella, which are heterozygous for two of the three existing esterase-2 alleles. In freshly laidDrosophila eggs only the maternal enzyme forms are present and during the first 15 hours of development the staining of these forms becomes progressively fainter. After 16 and 17 h, the paternal and hybrid bands of ADH and GPDH respectively become obvious. Before hatching, the intensity distribution in the three-banded pattern of reciprocal hybrids is asymmetric in favour of the persisting maternal enzyme form. InEphestia embryos, however, there is no persistence of the maternal esterases. In all reciprocal heterozygotes a three-banded pattern suddenly appears 96 h after egg deposition, indicating synchronous activation of both parental alleles. The relative intensity distribution in the hybrid patterns approaches that of the mature larvae stepwise and in an allele-specific manner. This result and the fact that the various heterozygous types exhibit unequal total activities suggest that the Esterase-2 alleles have different activities, which are fixed late in embryogenesis.