Inheritance of allozyme variations through crossing experiments with the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis L.

Seven full‐sib Mytilus edulis families were successfully reared, and both the parents and their offspring were investigated for up to ten different enzymes by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The inheritance is Mendelian and the various alleles exhibit the same electrophoretic mobilities in parents and offspring. This indicates that the unusually high number of alleles observed in some loci (approximately 30 in PGI and PGM) when the polyacrylamide gel technique is used reflects the true genetic variation of the natural populations in question, and are not laboratory artefacts. High mortality at the larval and spat stages is supposed to cause observed deviations from the expected Mendelian proportions.