Columbia’s fruit-fly group
As a Columbia student, Sturtevant joined Morgan’s research group and investigated inherited traits in fruit flies. An early interest in pedigrees, including his family’s horses, developed into experimental and statistical genetics.
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Mapping through recombination
Genes on the same chromosome are often inherited together but can be separated by chromosome exchange. Sturtevant used recombination proportions to infer relative gene order and published a map in 1913. Its distances came from inheritance statistics rather than direct measurements of microscopic images.
Research at Caltech
Sturtevant completed his doctorate in 1914, continued collaborating with Morgan and moved to Caltech in 1928. Linkage mapping connected observable combinations of traits with relative positions on chromosomes and became a continuing tool in genetic analysis.