The results presented here illustrate that selection for ethanol consumption produced lines with the predicted reciprocal relationship to acute withdrawal, but the selection for acute withdrawal did not produce lines that differed in ethanol consumption. In fact, both the High and Low lines for acute withdrawal had lower levels of consumption than the average for the progenitor HS4 population. The failure to demonstrate differences in consumption between the withdrawal lines may simply reflect the unique genetics of the HS4 animals, e.g., epistatic interactions that are present in the HS4 but not in B6×D2 intercrosses where the reciprocal relationship is readily observed (Metten et al. 1998a, b).
