10. Suppose you are exploring a remote part of the world and you come across a rare
species of mammals that has not been widely studied. You then notice that the
phenotypes of the animals in the population you found are not all alike, that is, some of
their traits vary in the population. Having just learned about genetics in your BIOL 1710
course, you are instantly curious about the inheritance pattern of some of these traits.
You then decide to carry out genetics experiments with a few of these animals to figure
out their inheritance patterns (this species is known to be diploid).
You selected two independent characters for this study, because you observed
they are not uniform in the population. Describe these two characters and the alternative
traits found for each of them (use your creativity here). Assign letters for the alternative
alleles (assuming only two alleles are present), and indicate which allele is dominant in
the population. Then, looking at both characters in the same cross, describe a cross
between two individuals of this species that differ in at least one of these traits, indicating
the parental (P) genotypes and phenotypes, as well as the expected genotypes and
phenotypes in the offspring ($F_1$) produced.
