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Fig. 5.

The arrow points to a ring chromatid in Artemisia spinescens.

The species, Machaeranthera tortifolta came from thé experimentally irradiated
plot in Rock Valley, NTS. This species is characterized by six chromosome
pairs consisting of three large and three slightly smaller pairs (Fig. 6).
A
large number of extranuclear bodies occur in telophase I and telophase II

(Fig. 7), although they are not as large or prominent as those of Artemisia

spinescens.
Flower buds collected 14 and 29 April 1976 contained meiotic
cells at the proper stage for analysis.
Chromosomal aberrations detected
included five bivalents and two univalents, acentric fragments, and dicentrics
(Figs. 8, 9, 10, and 11; Table 2).
No multivalents were observed. Of the
2,714 cells analyzed, 1,767 came from nine plants with doses ranging from 2.5
to 4.5 R/day, and 947 cells were from five plants outside the immediate irradiated area where

the dose rate was

less

360

than

1.0 R/day.

One of

this latter group

Fig. 6.

The normal condition of six large bivalents in Machaeranthera
tortifolta.

came from an area remote to the radiation source where the radiation level
was background.
It has been included with the lower level for analysis, however. A large part of the aberrant cells from the high dose area came from
a single plant which contained 64% of the anaphase cells showing a dicentric
and/or a fragment (Fig. 11) showing that the plant was heterozygous for a
paracentric inversion.

The Mann-Whitney test does not indicate significant differences between these
populations.
The third species Krameria parvifolia which came also from the Rock Valley
Flower buds with meiotic cells
site, has six large chromosomes (Fig. 12),
were collected on 19 and 20 May 1976.
361

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