Inheritance of brown-eye and colourless-eye in the mosquito Aedes aegypti

Abstract

An autosomal recessive gene bw (probably closely linked to y on chromosome 2) gives a brown eye colour. When this gene and the sex-linked gene re (red-eye) are both homozygous, a colourless-eye results.

Brown-eye shows good viability and penetrance, and it has been maintained as a pure stock. Colourless-eye shows 87% penetrance in both sexes, and the females are low in viability and fertility. A colourless-eye stock has been maintained by crossing colourless-eyed males to their heterozygous red-eyed sibs.

Crosses indicated no allelism between bw and ru (rust-eye), nor with w (white-eye). However some complementation between bw and w was indicated.