  We compared the multiplicities of pizero, eta, Kzero and of charged particles
in quark and gluon jets in 3-jet events, as measured by the OPAL experiment at
LEP. The comparisons were performed for distributions unfolded to 100% pure
quark and gluon jets, at an effective scale Qjet which took into account
topological dependences of the 3-jet environment. The ratio of particle
multiplicity in gluon jets to that in quark jets as a function of Qjet for
pizero, eta and Kzero was found to be independent of the particle species. This
is consistent with the QCD prediction that the observed enhancement in the mean
particle rate in gluon jets with respect to quark jets should be independent of
particle species. In contrast to some theoretical predictions and previous
observations, we observed no evidence for an enhancement of eta meson
production in gluon jets with respect to quark jets, beyond that observed for
charged particles. We measured the ratio of the slope of the average charged
particle multiplicity in gluon jets to that in quark jets, C, and we compared
it to a next-to-next-to-next-to leading order calculation. Our result,
C=2.27+-0.20(stat+syst),is about one standard deviation higher than the
perturbative prediction.
