PHENETICS OF NATURAL-POPULATIONS .5. GENETIC CORRELATES OF PHENOTYPICVARIATION IN THE POCKET GOPHER (THOMOMYS BOTTAE) IN CALIFORNIA

A comparison of electrophoretic and cranial (osteometric) variation in adult male and female pocket gophers (Thomomys bottae) confirms the e xistence of a genetic-phenetic variation correlation (GPVC)-a correlat ion of genetic variation and morphological variation over a set of nat ural populations, In males, characters correlated with body size give the highest GPVCs; in females, the characters with the highest GPVCs t end to be poorly correlated with body size, Genetic variation, as meas ured by variation in allozymes, explains up to half of the heterogenei ty among populations in levels of morphological variation for some cha racters in females; in males about 80% of the heterogeneity of phenoty pic variation is explained by allozyme heterozygosity, There is no evi dence for a correlation between individual heterozygosity and growth r ate or body size for individuals within a population. The simplest way to explain these results is to assume that estimates of heterozygosit y based on protein variation are correlated with the amount of additiv e genetic variation in populations. DNA fingerprint (heterogeneity of minisatellite regions) data from six populations are consistent with t he electrophoretic and morphological results, although there is eviden ce that fingerprint heterogeneity in populations does not increase lin early with allozyme heterozygosity or morphological variability.