Homozygous females lay some eggs but they very rarely hatch. The majority of embryos laid by homozygous females fail to cellularise. Those that do cellularise have an uneven cell size and distribution compared to wild-type embryos. The embryos fail to form pole cells and have a high frequency of "drop-out" nuclei which are eliminated from the surface blastoderm layer and fall into the interior. Syncytial and newly cellularised embryos undergo mitosis with undercondensed chromatin, and a number of spindle abnormalities are seen, including kinked spindles, spindles with microtubules inappropriately associating with chromatin on an adjacent spindle and tetrapolar spindles. The embryos gastrulate normally but generally fail to hatch.