Effect of reciprocal crossing of selected lines of mice.

Mass selection of mice was conducted in populations of various size for 16 generations. Each selected population (E) corresponded to an analogous unselected population (C). The experiment was conducted in three replicates. After the 16th generation the replicates of the selected and control lines were crossed.Reciprocal crossing within the control lines gave better results than reciprocal crossing of the selected lines, despite the fact that the selected mice were characterised by a higher inbreeding coefficient. Larger effects were also obtained when crossing smaller rather than larger populations. This result is understandable since the animals from the smaller populations were characterised by higher inbreeding coefficients.The effect of heterosis was higher upon crossing the control lines rather than the selected ones and this caused a decreased the response to selection in almost all the traits investigated.