Abstract
A RECENT paper by Hewlett1 has directed attention to the fact that the slopes of dosage–mortality curves for houseflies resistant to DDT are less steep than those for houseflies susceptible to DDT ; he explained this in terms of (1) the relation between the amount of DDT absorbed by flies and the external dose ; and (2) a possible variation from fly to fly of the DDT exerting a toxic effect at the primary site of action, a variation brought about or intensified by enzymatic detoxification of DDT in resistant flies. An alternative explanation of the phenomenon would be that DDT resistance in houseflies is genetically controlled, and that very few of the strains of insects so far examined represent genetically pure lines.
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References
Hewlett, P. S., Ann. App. Biol., 46, 21 (1958).
Davidson, G., Nature, 178, 863 (1956).
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WILSON-JONES, K., DAVIDSON, G. Dosage–Mortality Curves for Houseflies Susceptible and Resistant to DDT. Nature 182, 403–404 (1958). https://doi.org/10.1038/182403a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/182403a0
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