Nonlatitudinal environmental correlations for alcohol dehydrogenase in southern African populations of Drosophila melanogaster.

The relation between alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) allozyme frequencies and several environmental variables, as well as latitude and longitude, was examined in 17 natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster in Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Unlike several other studies, we found no latitudinal allele-frequency clines and no significant correlation with temperature. We found that the frequency of the most common allele (AdhS) was positively correlated with an increase in rainfall. We suggest that substrate-induced toxicity may explain the geographic variability in our results.