CROSS ABILITY OF MIMULUS GUTTATUS IN RELATION TO COMPONENTS OF GENE FIXATION.

The joint effects of parental gene fixation and consanguinity of mates upon the fitness of matings was examined in Mimulus guttatus. Plants from four populations were crossed at five levels of genetic relatedness, and five viability characters were scored in progeny. Parental gene fixation at 12 polymorphic allozyme loci was partitioned into local, subpopulation, and population components. A model is proposed wherein parental gene fixation influences distance-dependent crossing success. At a fixed locus, inbreeding is favored if natural selection caused allele fixation, or is disfavored if gene fixation was random. The distance between mates required to eliminate gene fixation depends upon patch size of fixation. When selective fixation and patch size differ among loci, an optimal crossing distance is possible. In M. guttatus, progeny viability generally decreased with greater relatedness between mates, but this decrease was often heterogeneous among populations. The highest pollen viability and the lowest seed set were found at an intermediate relatedness between mates. To determine whether parental gene fixation influences these crossing patterns, a type of mutational-load analysis was performed. Progeny fitness was regressed on parent F and fitness estimated at F = 1. This was done for each component of F, for a) crosses that maintain gene fixation and b) crosses that eliminate gene fixation. A multiplicative, composite measure of fitness indicates that, in M. guttatus, genes fixed during local or population differentiation favor outbreeding, while genes fixed during subpopulation differentiation favor inbreeding. This predicts that random mating within subpopulations confers highest progeny fitness, exclusive of between-population matings. However, predictions did not fit the observed patterns of crossing success very well, perhaps because gene fixation was relatively low or was not adequately measured at loci influencing fitness.