Chapter 3, Problem 5EQ

Occasionally during meiosis, a mistake can happen whereby a gamete may receive zero or two sex chromosomes rather than one. Bridges made a cross between white-eyed female flies and red-eyed male flies. As you would expect, most of the offspring were red-eyed females and white-eyed males. On rare occasions, however, he found a white-eyed female or a red-eyed male. These rare flies were not due to new gene mutations, but instead were due to mistakes during meiosis in the parent flies. Consider the mechanism of sex determination in fruit flies and propose how this could happen. In your answer, describe the sex chromosome composition of the rare flies.