Mating behaviour as a fitness component involved in maintaining allozyme polymorphism in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

The components of phenotypic variation for mating activity, fertility and egg-adult viability were estimated in the leucine aminopeptidase-A and esterased allozyme systems in Drosophila melanogasfer. It was shown that variation among separate genotypes of these enzyme systems contributed considerably to the total phenotypic variation. For mating activity and fertility, 24% and 12% respectively of the total phenotypic variation was attributed to differences among allozyme genotypes, whereas for viability this component only amounted to 4%.