The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual charactersMorgan, Thomas Hunt
Science
The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual characters
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Genetics; Poultry; Sex (Biology)
That it is the odor of the females that attracts the male can not be
doubted. It might still be claimed that the female chooses amongst her
suitors the darkest males, but the evidence gives no grounds for
inferring such a choice, and since she will even accept males with
female wings when they attempt to mate with her, it does not appear
probable that the color of the male is a factor in the result, or at
least if it is, then it must be entirely subordinate to the sense of
smell in finding the female and of touch after he arrives. There is
little or nothing in the behavior of these moths, or in that of the
silkworm moth, according to Kellogg, to suggest that vision plays any
significant rôle in courtship.
Concerning the genetic situation in insects, there are only a few cases
that have been studied. The most instructive are those in which more
than a single kind of male exists (two or three), one of which may be
like the female, the other quite different. The best worked out cases
are _Papilio memnon_ and _P. polytes_. De Meijere and Punnett have
shown from the breeding data that it is possible to frame an explanation
of such a sort that the aberrant female differs from the female
resembling the male in only a single genetic factor--one not sex-linked
(_i. e._, not carried by an X chromosome), but autosomal. The gene would
be of such a sort that it affects the female only--producing no visible
effect on the male. Such a conclusion, if established, helps,
theoretically at least, toward simplifying the situation in other
species, for it shows that genetic factors occur whose influence is on
one sex alone; hence the difference between the male and one type of
female does in such cases result from a single gene present in both but
causing them to be differently colored. There would be no need, then, to
assume that the difference had been slowly built up by selection, but
rather that the difference arose at some time by a single mutant step.
The incorporation of the step in the species would then follow if the
effect of the gene were useful in mating or if it had some other primary
significance for the welfare of the species, the different effect
produced on the male and female being only an unimportant by-product of
its action. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that because a
single factor difference between the two kinds of females will explain
the genetic results, it does not necessarily follow that the difference
did arise as a single mutation. The foregoing argument does no more than
imply that the difference in question may have arisen in this way, and
if so, that the situation, as it exists, would be the more easily
comprehended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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