Occurrence of Susceptibility to Carbon Dioxide in Drosophla melanogaster from Different Countries

Abstract

UNTIL recently, all virus-induced susceptibility to carbon dioxide of Drosophila melanogaster ¹ seemed derived from one stock, and repeated search for another occurrence in many laboratory stocks remained unavailing. Some years ago, one of us (F. T.) discovered that D. melanogaster flies, recently trapped in the neighbourhood of Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, Herts, showed the characteristic hereditary carbon dioxide susceptibility, but as the other of us (H. K.) had kept at Rothamsted a few years earlier a substrain of L'Héritier's original stock, it was impossible to be sure that an escape was not responsible. However, a recent report has made it clear that carbon dioxide-susceptible flies, far from being rare, occurred in about one-third of all freshly trapped strains of D. melanogaster in France². In addition, we are indebted to a personal communication from Prof. L'Héritier in which he states that he found susceptible flies in cultures from Israel but could not detect the susceptibility in flies from Africa or Japan.